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Crime-fighting duty
appeals to Donohues
The retired police chief is proud
to see his son thrive in an HPD career
Sgt. Lee Donohue Jr. never thought about becoming anything but a police officer.
"I was born into it," the 40-year-old said. "It felt like it was the natural thing to do."
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Lee Jr., the firstborn son with two older sisters, often followed his father to the office.
"It's like I grew up in the police department," said the younger Donohue. "I was always around police officers."
When he was a sixth-grader, he and his younger brother frequently visited the Narcotics Division, in the basement of the old Pawaa police station, where his father was a lieutenant. Detectives would show the boys drugs they had seized.
Even during high school, Junior was Dad's designated driver when he socialized at his police friends' houses.
"My dad considered them like his brothers," he said, and Donohue Jr. considered them his uncles.
The chief said he did it to stay involved with his sons, not to encourage them to become policemen.
"Like any father, you want your son to be a doctor," he said. "But I was proud when he told me that he was taking the police officer test and more so when he got selected."
After a brief stint as a security guard and a prison guard, Donohue Jr. joined the Honolulu Police Department at the age of 23, following in his father's footsteps.
Donohue Sr. said his proudest moment for his son came when he graduated valedictorian of his recruit class.
Donohue Jr. is a reflection of his father, though he's three-quarters Korean and Dad is half-Korean, half-Irish. Both men stand 5 feet 10 inches tall and weigh 220 pounds. The two wear the same thin mustache, though Dad's is gray.
As with their physical likeness, their career choice may be more nature than nurture.
"I was destined" to be a police officer, the senior Donohue said. He was always drawn toward the police department on school career days, and leaned toward law enforcement on career tests. "I always wanted to be a police officer or pilot."
A recent revelation showed this natural father-son bent runs even deeper in the Donohue family.
The chief knew little of his own father, a Navy man from Ohio who was divorced from his mother when Donohue was 6. Only recently, Donohue learned that his father had applied to the Honolulu Police Department in the 1940s after his discharge from the Navy, but couldn't pass the physical because of a heart murmur.
The chief has stayed close to his sons.
"I made a conscious effort to stay involved with the kids," he said.
When Lee Jr. got sucker punched in the nose in the second grade, his father started a karate class in Hawaii Kai for kids.
Father and son continue to practice karate together. Donohue Sr. runs a karate school, and they both conduct classes. The two also share fishing, football and golf together every holiday in a club of their police brethren.
Donohue Jr. said being in the department was rough while his father was chief. Fellow officers remarked that he received special treatment, that he got a certain beat because "he's your dad," which he said was not true.
"It's not easier, it's harder," he said. "Now supervisors expect something better than an average officer, there's extra pressure on you. They don't cut you extra slack."
The former chief said: "Naturally the higher I rose, the more he became exposed. ... He had to compete like everybody else. ... Anything he got, he worked for."
When he was younger, Donohue Jr. aspired to become police chief.
"I'm still interested in making rank, but not as high as chief," the sergeant said. "After seeing what he had to go through, I don't think I would want to.
"There's a lot of trials and tribulations that go along with the job," Donohue Jr. said.
He was always concerned about his father and fellow officers' reaction to his decisions. "Whatever decisions he made would impact everybody on down," he said.
Donohue Jr., like his dad, has brought 12-year-old son Trey Dixon Lee around to the police department ever since he was born.
But Donohue Jr., like his dad, said he hopes his son would "pick something better, although I got no regrets."
But it may be too late.
"He already has it in him -- he wants to join the police department," he said.