BLUE BLOODS; FAMILY HAS LAPD LINEAGE; CADET LATEST OF FOUR GENERATIONS WHO SIGNED ON TO PROTECT, SERVE.

Byline: Jenifer Hanrahan Daily News Staff Writer

Chad Dellinger's family is solidly middle-class, but in their own way, they're blue-bloods.

Dellinger's father was a Los Angeles police officer. So was Dellinger's grandfather and great-grandfather. Altogether, eight members of his family have protected and served.

Today, the 22-year-old Dellinger will continue a family tradition that spans four generations when he graduates from the Los Angeles Police Academy with 56 other cadets.

``Hearing the stories of my father and grandfather and great-grandfather, I got hooked, and I couldn't get rid of the feeling of doing that job,'' Dellinger said. ``It's all I ever wanted to be.''

Growing up, Dellinger spent summers hanging out with his father, Jim Dellinger, 51, who proudly wore his crisp dark-blue Los Angeles police uniform for 26 years. The dutiful son tagged along when his dad walked a beat in the Northridge Fashion Center and nabbed troublemakers and shoplifters there.

One summer, he and his two siblings helped their father paint blue stripes on handicapped spaces in the mall parking lot.

``I saw the good side of the law,'' Chad Dellinger said. ``I remember that the people who respected him, the people who were his friends, were the people he served.''

At family gatherings, a young Chad listened to family members swap stories from the streets, like the time his father helped deliver a baby. And then there was the time that his grandfather, Bill Regan, foiled a check forgery scheme when from behind a door he overheard the bad guys plot their crime.

Now 82, Regan, a Van Nuys resident, has long been retired after 25 years with the LAPD. Jim Dellinger is also retired, and is now working as a security manager at the Northridge mall.

Chad Dellinger has a whole career in blue ahead of him. His room is adorned with a panel from a LAPD cruiser bearing the city seal and the creed, ``To Protect and Serve.''

``I guess Chad didn't have a choice,'' said the elder Dellinger. ``He was raised on war stories and he was raised on police stories.''

The family's LAPD heritage was started by Michael Regan Sr., an Irish immigrant from County Kerry who worked as a bartender and a grocery store clerk before finding his calling.

Michael Regan passed down not only the love of the job, but practical sense to his four sons, Bill Regan recalled.

Bill Regan's two brothers, Michael Jr. and John, joined the LAPD and a third brother, Tom, was a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy. John Regan's wife, Augusta Bibo Regan, also became what he called an LAPD ``policewoman.''

``When I got out of school in '33, I was working as a shopping clerk. My father said, `You go down and take that exam,' '' Bill Regan said. ``I said, `Yes sir.' He knew after you did 25 years or 30 years there was a pension at the end of it.''

But despite the steady paycheck, police work has risks. Michael Regan Sr. suffered debilitating head injuries while directing traffic when a trolley jumped its tracks and pinned him against an automobile.

Bill Regan is proud that his grandson is following in his footsteps, but he's worried. A freak trolley car accident is one thing, but today police face ambushes and bank robbers running through the streets spraying bullets from automatic weapons.

``We were living in a entirely different social environment,'' Bill Regan said. ``Things are so damned different today, it's pathetic. Today if you don't shoot first, you're dead. Hardly anyone was shooting in my day.''

``I'm hoping nothing happens to him,'' the grandfather said.

But Chad Dellinger says he wants nothing more than to have his badge pinned to his uniform, the same kind worn by the men of his family for four generations.

``Before I went to the academy, I figured I was the only one who really believed in `To protect and serve,' '' Dellinger said. ``But everyone else in the academy feels the same way I do.''

CAPTION(S):

Photo

PHOTO (color) LAPD recruit Chad Dellinger, left, stands with his dad, Jim Dellinger, and grandfather Bill Regan, both retired from the force. Chad holds a photo of his great-grandfather Michael Regan Sr. wearing the blue.

Tina Gerson/Daily News