Radar Love: A Trip Down Memory Interstate
By Julie Perine on January 20, 2019
The year was 1974 and “Radar Love” was on the Billboard charts – and car radios everywhere. Jim Hotsinpiller was a rookie on the 
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Bridgeport Police force and about to marry Miss Pamela Jo Bolyard.
Becoming a law enforcement officer is a commitment she always knew he would make and his attitude toward his calling was one that would keep her under the radar – in a big way.
Lesson 1: Law Enforcement has its Own Vows
While still newlyweds, the couple was returning from Maryland where they had visited family. Jim’s brother Terry was in the passenger seat of the car and Pam was driving. Jim, who would be reporting to duty when he returned to Bridgeport, was in the backseat sleeping.
“He had told me that if I got stopped, not to open the glove box because his gun was in there and that everything I needed was over the visor,” she said. “Of course, when I hit West Virginia, the speed limit changed. I wasn’t thinking and there behind me were the blue lights.”
As she began to slow down, Jim slowly started sitting up in the backseat.
“He knew I was getting stopped,” Pam said. “Before I rolled my window down, he told me only to say ‘yes sir’ and ‘no sir.’”
The state trooper was looking over Pam’s driver’s license when he noticed a person in the backseat.
“He said, ‘Is that you, Hots?’ to which Jim replied, ‘Yes. Write her up.’”
And he did.
A couple days later, Pam proceeded to Magistrate Trupo’s office, which incidentally was located in the former Bridgeport Baptist Church on Main Street, where Starving Artist is now housed.
“I go to pay the ticket and he looks at me and says, 'Aren’t you Hots’s wife? Can’t you get out of this?’”
Pam told Magistrate Trupo that wasn’t the case and that, in fact, her husband was one who told the trooper to give her the ticket.
The “walk the line” state of mind rubbed off.
“I got stopped in Bridgeport one day and told the policeman that if he didn’t give me a ticket, I’d be upset with him,” Pam said.
Lesson 2: Law Enforcement is a Brotherhood
The saga continued when Pam got pulled over on Route 73 (now Route 131) for having dead plates. She knew they had expired and had asked Jim to put the renewal sticker on her license plate. He had told her to do it herself and, well, she hadn’t gotten around to it.
As the city police officer approached her – just at the entrance of Bridgeport Cemetery – he told her that her she was driving with expired plates.
“I said, ‘The sticker is right here,’’” Pam replied. “He said, ‘Ma’am, get out of your 
car and put it on.’”
car and put it on.’”
Thinking her husband tipped off the PD, she later asked him.
“He just grinned. He never did answer me,” she said.
Their son Derek was just a baby and Dustin about 6 years old when Pam and her mother took the boys to Myrtle Beach to camp with family. The road trip was going well; that is until they approached the West Virginia/Virginia border when – you guessed it – Pam got stopped for speeding.
Upon the dash were Bridgeport Police patches which Jim kept in the car.
“He liked to trade patches with other policemen when we traveled,” she said.
The officer noticed and patches and asked who she knew in law enforcement, to which she replied her husband. She didn’t get a ticket, but she did get a surprise when she called Jim that evening from the hotel. He commented on her clocked speed on the interstate.
“That guy had contacted Jim,” Pam said.
Lesson 3: May Law Enforcement be with You
Jim always did things the right way. He lived it and taught it to two little boys who grew up aspiring to be policemen.
Lt. Jim Hotsinpiller suffered a fatal heart attack in 2001, leaving behind his wife and those two young men.
Dustin had already joined the Bridgeport Police force when Pam and Derek, a Bridgeport High School athlete, traveled to Pennsylvania for a basketball tournament. It was a beautiful Sunday and they were cruising the highway when Pam noticed a person standing in the middle of the road.
“He’s pulling you over, Mom,” Derek said.
Pam rehearsed the words going through her head: “Yes sir” and “No sir.”
She stuck with the script, but got the ticket anyway. It was lying on the Hotsinpillers’ kitchen counter when Dustin saw it, assuming his little brother had been the perpetrator. Pam confessed it was her. Her elder son, trying to make things better, offered to try to rectify the situation by making some contacts.
“I said, ‘No,’ that Derek needed to know I was taking care of it the right way, like Dad would have. I told him it had to be that way,” Pam said.
Pam keeps an eye on her speedometer these days. She’s till under the radar. She’s grateful – and sometimes serves herself with a smile – when she feels the “walk the line” spirit speaking to her.
Editor's Note: Pictured from top: The late Lt. Jim Hotsinpiller; Pam Hotsinpiller; U.S. Deputy Marshall Dustin Hotsinpiller taken when he was a member of the Bridgeport Police force; the late Derek Hotsinpiller, U.S. Deputy Marshal, who received a fatal gun wound while serving in the line of duty; Derek, Pam and Dustin Hotsinpiller and the Hotsinpiller family: Terry and wife Brenda (left) Dustin and wife Ashley with their three sons Landon, Liam and Logan (right) and Pam (center).
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