Las Vegas Detectives

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"K" is for Kirkman Reprinted from the January/February 1993 issue of Santa Barbara Magazine - by Matthew Heller It was a child custody case and his assignment was simple: observe the mother and her children for a weekend and then report back to his client, her ex-husband. So why was Mike Kirkman, Santa Barbara private eye, dressing in orange robes and sleeping on a mattress in the middle of nowhere? Well, as chance would have it, the woman was a disciple of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, that guru with a taste for group sex and Rolls Royces. The ex-husband wanted to know if she was exposing the kids to something more than ashrams and alfalfa sprouts. Once a month, the Rajneeshees had a "Let Go" weekend at their California desert commune-sort of an open house for potential recruits. Kirkman figured he could go undercover and get the goods on the woman. The orange robes, the non-stop chanting, sleeping on lumpy mattresses, 30 to a dorm-it wasn't Kirkman's idea of a great time. But he had a job to do. No, this isn't the latest wrinkle in Santa Barbara detective fiction, an addition to the ranks of Lew Archer or Kinsey Millhone. Mike Kirkman is a real-life local gurnshoe whose experience with the Rajneeshees is just one chapter in a history of bizarre cases. Working out of a spartan office on Garden Street, decorated with a few professional plaques and prints of eagles, he handles everything from runaway teenagers to murder suspects. In what has become a competitive field-the local Yellow Pages lists some two dozen sleuths he's a leader of the pack. Alluding to his tenacity and resourcefulness, one local attorney calls him "a bright bulldog." "He's probably the most successful private investigator in this area," says Santa Barbara Sheriffs Detective Fred Ray, a former colleague. After 14 years in the business, Kirkman could be excused for slowing down. But this dapper, stocky man-who looks more like football coach Hank Strarn than Sam Spade or Magnum P.I. -still approaches detective work with the vigor of an Andy Hardy. "I tend to run around with a childlike energy when I'm busy at work," he says. "Some days I think I'm totally burned out. Then a new challenge appears. I get pretty excited about jumping into something new." Kirkman's real name is Malcolm-that's how he's listed in the phone book-but he has gone by Mike since childhood. These days, he uses Mike as a screening device. "When people call and ask for Malcolm, I know they don't know me, so my antenna goes out," he explains. He came to detective work via an unlikely route. A native Californian, he was born in Oakland and raised in Visalia, a San Joaquin Valley Farm town. After dropping out of college, he spent eight years in the Air Force, working as a mechanic on B-52s. In 1966, he came to Santa Barbara as an insurance salesman, opening an agency. Kirkman sold his agency after only two years but was at a loss for what to do next. As a stopgap, he signed on as a sheriffs deputy. "The job would be six weeks, then I'd quit," he says. "I knew my first wife would not have enthusiasm for that kind of work." He distinguished himself by fainting at his first sight of a corpse.

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