Cal Football: Center Michael Safell Living in a Household of First Responders Amid COVID-19

Cristi Saffell responded with three words when asked whether her husband’s job is stressful these days.

“Beyond. Beyond. Beyond.”

Her husband, Mike Saffell, is chief of police in Gardena, Calif., a position he had held for just four months before the COVID-19 pandemic changed his life.

“Right out of the gate,” he says.

Cristi Saffell is a labor and delivery nurse, so she brings her own set of concerns home every day. Her biggest concern is keeping her family safe. And the person in the family most affected by the coronavirus may be daughter Keegan Saffell, an emergency room nurse.

“She comes home, takes a shower, and goes to her room,” Cristi Saffell said of her daughter’s after-work self-quarantine routine, which begins and ends with those three phases.

All are living in the Saffell household, along with 17-year-old daughter Shelby and son Michael Saffell, a 290-pound Cal center who is now at home as he tries to stay in shape and take classes remotely.

Known to the public as a football player who might have the NFL in his future, Michael Saffell is for now a member of a southern California household of first-responders on the frontlines of the fight against the coronavirus.

“Obviously, it’s a scary time,” said Michael Saffell.

Mike, the father, notes the seemingly contradictory behavior the current crisis has forced upon police officers.

“It’s limiting physical contact in a profession driven by physical contact,” he said this week.

He said he has listed more than 60 new rules and protocols for police officers to follow in the new environment, and he has modified work schedules so that there is little or no overlap of shifts. It is forcing people into unusual shifts and roles.

They try to practice social distancing, but some situations require close contact, which means those police must wear masks, goggles, gloves and other protective equipment when dealing with the public.

So far no one in the Gardena Police Department has shown symptoms of COVID-19, but that concern never strays from Saffell’s mind.

“There’s not lot of playbook for this,” he said. “We have it for earthquakes, forest fires, but not for this.

“There’s a lot of pressures from a lot of places, but it’s manageable.”

His hours have increased, and he feels he must be at the office, rather than working from home.

“I’m the leader,” he said. “You can’t do that by phone. You have to be there. It’s like what coach [Justin] Wilcox does. You can’t be just some guy in an ivory tower.”

Saffell notes these concerns over the phone with a disarming calm. He has to.

“I work my hardest to make sure we have the facts, not hysteria,” Saffell said. “That [not panicking] is the No. 1 thing you bring to it.”

And he realizes all this must be sustained for a long period, perhaps a year or more, and that will be difficult. He suggests that some aspects of police work might never be the same again.

“Yet amid all the hysteria and news that is not great, we still have a community of people trying to connect," he said. "Even in the darkest days, people still care.”

Justin Wilcox, David Shaw and Brent Brennan provided a message during these trying times:

During spring ball, Michael Saffell talked about the depth Cal has on the offensive line in 2020 -- if there is a college football season in 2020: