KEN IGE / KIGE@STARBULLETIN.COM
Jennifer Taylor talked yesterday about her dramatic involvement in a police chase. Detective Robert Cravalho commandeered her Ford Escape, with a surfboard inside, on Tuesday, and together they pursued bank robbery suspect Dennis Pace.
Woman gets high praise
steering cop chase in SUVShe tailed a detective after he
left her auto to chase a suspected
bank robber on foot
Attorney Jennifer Taylor said she hesitated for just a second when a Honolulu police detective stopped her SUV in traffic Tuesday and said he needed her to follow a bank robber in a cab.
She asked to see some identification, then the chase was on.
"I was like, 'Hop on in, let's go get him,'" Taylor said. "I figured he couldn't have made that story up, he's gotta be telling the truth."
Taylor contacted Honolulu police yesterday after she heard they wanted to thank her for assisting in the capture of suspected bank robber Dennis Dale Pace.
Police said Pace ran out of the Kaheka branch of American Savings Bank with $4,174 in a dark backpack and got into a taxi, which drove toward Diamond Head on Kapiolani Boulevard.
Honolulu police Detective Robert Cravalho was on his lunch break near the bank when he saw Pace run out, followed by a teller who told the detective the bank had been robbed. Cravalho then flagged down Taylor.
"I was getting frustrated at the traffic in front of me. I was like, 'Don't you know I'm chasing a bank robber here?'" she said. "I called my boyfriend and said, 'You're not going to believe this, but I've got a plainclothes police officer in my car and we're following this guy who robbed a bank.'"
Her boyfriend, Russ Clock, said he tried to offer support.
"I said, 'Do what you need to do, and when you get here you get here,'" he recalled. "I wasn't worried. She's got a good head on her shoulders. I'm proud of her."
Taylor and Cravalho tailed the cab to Pumehana Street, where the suspect got out and ran through a gate. Cravalho got out as well to follow Pace on foot, but Taylor said she thought she would continue to tail Pace herself in her vehicle.
Just in case.
"I figured I should do my job and keep the guy in sight," she said.
In the meantime, Cravalho chased Pace down McCully Street and on to Niu Street. Joining him were two bystanders, Telesi Toa and Francis Filipo, who had seen Pace run past them at the corner of Ala Wai and Niu.
Taylor said she caught up to the entourage after she went down McCully, turned left on Kalakaua Boulevard and up Pau Street, on the cell phone with her boyfriend the whole time.
Toa and Filipo, along with two other men who were on Pau Street, detained Pace until he was handcuffed by a patrol officer. Pace was arrested and charged with bank robbery.
"I didn't think it was going to be a big deal," she said. "Then my boyfriend was watching the news and told me, 'That woman they're looking for is you.'
"Hopefully, everything can go back to normal now," she said.
Honolulu Police Department Crimestoppers
