DEDICATED FATHER QUITS SENATE CAREER FOR FAMILY.

Byline: Jon Matthews Scripps-McClatchy Western Service

For Rick Rollens, it is the hope that justifies the end.

Rollens devoted virtually all of his adult life to the California Senate, starting out as a lowly aide in an outlying office but rising through the ranks to become secretary of the chamber and one of the Capitol's most well-known and influential staff members.

But fewer know that Rollens also is the father of a 5-year-old son with a serious brain disorder. The financial demands of that situation forced Dad - described by many as a hard-working public servant - to end his Senate career at the start of the new year.

"I love the Senate. I have dedicated my entire adult life to this institution. I love my son," Rollens concluded in his hand-printed resignation note to Senate leader Bill Lockyer.

Senators, who don't agree on many things these days, recently stood up at their desks and gave Rollens a round of applause for his service.

"He is a conscientious, hard-working guy who played it straight," said Sen. Robert Beverly, R-Redondo Beach.

"He is thorough, hard-working, honest and diplomatic," added Lockyer, D-Hayward. "But what makes him even more valuable is his great knowledge and his ability to anticipate problems before they occur."

In a Capitol where cynicism can be just another attitude, Rollens sounds somehow old-fashioned. He has said that "every time I walk into this building for a day's work, it's truly an overwhelming experience to realize that I am here and a part of it."

But in an interview last week, Rollens said that for him and his family, the need to leave his job is clear. Treatment and program expenses for his youngest son, Russell, are staggering, running between $4,000 and $8,000 per month. Despite help from health insurance, the school district and support programs, a significant share still falls on the family.

While Rollens has been one of the Senate's highest paid workers - earning $115,368 a year to be secretary and to do other high-level staff work - he said it just wasn't enough.

The Folsom resident now hopes to use his legislative pension checks and benefits, earned from his 20-plus years of Senate work, to pay for Russell's ongoing treatment program, and then find a new job to bring in more money for other family expenses. While Rollens is 44, he said his position as Senate secretary made him an officer of the Senate and, under the rules of the legislative retirement system, allowed him to retire at any age after 10 years of service.

"It became a pure economic decision of making sure that we would have some base of funding for Russell and at the same time be able to provide for the rest of the family," he said.

Rollens said he and his wife, Janna, already have cashed in IRAs and other assets, borrowed money from family, sold some personal possessions.

"It does no one any good to have the auto repossessors come and take your car or the mortgage people foreclose on your house. That potentially could have been the scenario if I didn't act as I did," he added.

Both Rick and Janna Rollens have already seen many improvements in Russell, who has pervasive developmental delays. Janna manages an intensive, full-time treatment program that includes professional tutors working in their house and consultation with medical professionals across the country. At night, after Russell has enjoyed his long bath and gone to bed, she prepares the next day's curriculum.

The couple also have an older son, Matthew, 10, a fourth-grader and "a terrific kid" to whom Russell is very attached.

Janna Rollens said the decision for Rick to leave his job was very painful, but that they are both from families where sacrifice for the children was the routine rather than the exception.

As a boy growing up in Southern California, Rick Rollens had severe asthma. Doctors told his parents that the family needed to leave their one-bedroom duplex in Hollywood's damp climate and move to a drier place.

Money was tight. But by working two jobs - as a Lockheed machinist at night and a movie and TV extra by day - Rollens' father saved enough to make life better for the children, including a down payment on a house amid the sunnier orange groves of the San Fernando Valley.

"Some day, when we are in the convalescent home, we want to look back and say we did everything we could for our children. For Rick to make this sacrifice was not something that was totally alien to him; that's the way we were raised," Janna Rollens said.

"Rick has always been a very involved father. We've been co-parents in this together; we are partners," she added.

Both Janna and Rick are hopeful about Russell's future.

"It's all small steps but each time he gets better it is wonderful thing," Janna said.

While he is no longer Senate secretary, Rick Rollens remains in the Senate on a temporary contract as the transition takes place to a successor. He simultaneously served in two other key Senate roles: chief consultant to the Rules Committee and director of the Office of Floor Analyses.

Last week, Rollens sat at his office desk, fiddling with an empty coffee cup, the interrupting buzz of an intercom quickly dismissed.

He talked at length about his love of his job, but his far greater love for his family. He talked of the laughing school children who troop through the Capitol, his past work to reform the Senate's internal rules, of Janna and Matthew, of senators reaching out in support, of Russell.

Rollens said he hasn't ruled out any new job, including lobbying or consulting for a firm outside the Capitol. He said he has had previous opportunities outside the Legislature - and watched others leave for bigger bucks - but was never lured away from the Senate.

"I worked in high school at Taco Bell, making tacos. I've been a box boy, a produce clerk. I have worked all kinds of jobs and I have great respect for an honest day's work," he said.

"But I will do whatever is necessary to ensure that Russell will become the very best that he can be. There is no job in the world that is worth compromising his improvement, in effect, his life.

"When it really comes down to it, the choice is pretty easy for me."