Hanging tough

PALMER -- His hair is white now, what's left of it. The goatee is the same color. He's put on a few inches around the middle, but 61-year-old Mike Kolivosky still looks fit and strong, as though he could climb into the boxing ring and wail on an opponent like he did 30 years ago.

The Palmer resident was New York state Golden Gloves heavyweight champion in 1963, and won similar titles in Alaska in 1971 and 1974. He added the Alaska professional heavyweight crown in 1974. Kolivosky laughed as he recalled his rival in the pro championship bout.

"The guy ran like a thief," he said. "I could have trained on pretzels and beer for that one."

He compiled an 18-0-1 record in the ring, with two of his fights refereed by Gene Fullmer and Sonny Liston. Kolivosky also played professional baseball in the minor leagues, and served as an Alaska State Trooper -- rising to the rank of colonel as the agency's top man.

These days, Kolivosky is retired and spends time tending plants outside the Palmer home he shares with wife Melanie. But he stays active, playing in a softball league with the same intensity he showed as a kid in the minors. There are several exercise machines in a second-floor room in the couple's house, along with a speed bag and heavy bag. The blue trunks Kolivosky wore in his boxing heyday are displayed on a wall next to his red boxing gloves. There are posters advertising his pro fights and pictures of a young Kolivosky crouched in boxing stance.

The room also shows another side of his sports personality -- a passion for the Chicago Cubs. There are framed photos and posters of Cub greats, and even a picture of Kolivosky with announcer Harry Carey taken the day he spent a few innings in the Wrigley Field press box.

Visitors to the Kolivoskys' home know they're at the right place when they see a wooden Cubs logo in front of the couple's house. One car's license plate reads "Cubfan" while a truck's plate says "Cubeze." In the yard, there's even a green seat from Wrigley that Kolivosky acquired after a stadium renovation.

Baseball was Kolivosky's first love as a boy growing up in Niagara, N.Y., where he strained to hear weak radio broadcasts of major league games. On the field, he was a hard-throwing righthander who signed with the New York Yankees after high school to play in the New York-Pennsylvania League and, later, in the Western Carolina League.

Bus trips with teammates in the Carolina league proved educational in an unexpected way for the young man from upstate New York. He remembers the team stopping for lunch in a small North Carolina town in 1961. Everyone got off the bus and went inside except the two black players, who stayed on the bus.

"My first thought was 'I'm hungry. They must be, too.' Then I saw the batboy bring out two sack lunches for them. I'd heard about segregation, but I'd never seen that."

At spring training in South Carolina, he noticed that all the waiters and waitresses in the hotel restaurant were white. Catching a glimpse through a kitchen door, though, he saw blacks preparing food and washing dishes.

"I wondered how come they could cook the food but couldn't bring it in," Kolivosky said.

Joins Alaska State Troopers

He got what he called "a half-baked offer from the Pittsburgh Pirates" to play minor league ball, but opted for business school instead. Kolivosky's father was a coal miner and factory worker, and urged his son against pursuing what he considered a risky career path.

Business wasn't in the boy's blood, though. He wanted something with more action so he enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1963 to become a military policeman. Kolivosky was assigned to Fort Wainwright, working out of Fairbanks Police Department as a Wainwright "town patrol" officer before leaving the Army in 1966.

He found his niche that fall while attending the Alaska State Trooper Academy. His first trooper position was in Fairbanks, then he was assigned to Nome and later to Tok. He joined the Palmer trooper office in April 1972.

He kept boxing at the same time, winning the Arctic Winter Games' heavyweight division in 1974. Gordie Gladson of Palmer encouraged Kolivosky to continue in the sport and the two trained together.

"Gordie was an excellent trainer, a good friend," Kolivosky said. "He did a lot for boxing."

His first pro fight was in Anchorage in 1977 and he earned $400 for winning a six-round bout. He soon earned a rating in Ring Magazine.

Meanwhile, former Dallas Cowboy defensive end Ed "Too Tall" Jones was giving boxing a go. No contracts were signed but a tentative agreement was reached for one or two fights between the pair. If Kolivosky won the first fight, Jones was guaranteed a rematch on the East Coast, with "Wide World of Sports" possibly broadcasting portions of the event. But the match-up never materialized because Jones was arrested on a rape charge.

Although never having lost a match, Kolivosky admits he suffered some damage on occasion.

"Even if you win, you get hit," he said.

He learned to box in Buffalo, N.Y., in a bare-bones gym where wall signs carried rules such as, "Don't spit on the floor." One of the trainers there had worked with Archie Moore, and Kolivosky drilled hard on the sport's fundamentals.

"I got into a stable with a bunch of pros," he said. "Back in the '40s and '50s boxing was a real hotbed, even in Buffalo."

Melanie Kolivosky watched her husband's pro fights in Anchorage. She didn't enjoy seeing him get hit but she couldn't stay away, either.

"It was scary," said Melanie, who married Mike 29 years ago this month.

The same was true of tussles during Mike's trooper career. He was never shot, although there were some close calls. Once he and another officer were pinned down by an armed fugitive. Kolivosky talked the man into giving up his gun but the suspect suddenly pulled out a knife, which Kolivosky grabbed away.

Former trooper partner Bob Koslick recalled a 1970 incident in Fairbanks. Koslick was a new trooper riding with shift supervisor Kolivosky when they got a report of a late-night stabbing. The attacker was still in the house when the pair arrived.

"Mike got him, ID'd him and got a confession out of him right away," said Koslick. "He was a man's man. In law enforcement, it really helps knowing your partner can back you up."

They quickly forged a strong friendship, said Koslick, chuckling at the memory of "two Polacks in the same car."

Koslick was his partner's best man when Kolivosky married Melanie. He and some other troopers helped Kolivosky train for the Golden Gloves, but that was limited to non-sparring activities.

"Mike had a hard time finding sparring partners because no one wanted to step into the ring with him," Koslick said.

He didn't abuse his physical prowess, though. Emery Chapple of Fairbanks, former trooper captain and later commissioner of the Department of Public Safety, wrote a letter to Kolivosky applauding his restraint on the job.

"He acknowledged that, although Mike had skills to produce bodily harm to people, he never did. I think that meant more than anything to Mike. His biggest asset is that he's so honest. He's just a solid guy."

The troopers lost several officers to higher-paying jobs when the trans-Alaska pipeline was being built. Many couldn't refuse offers of $1,000 per week or more compared to the $1,000 monthly trooper salary.

"I wanted to be a state trooper so I stuck with it," Kolivosky said.

Named trooper director

He made lieutenant in 1978, and was appointed trooper director by Gov. Bill Sheffield on Jan. 1, 1983. The 1985 case of Anchorage serial murderer Robert Hansen -- labeled the "butcher baker" -- was one of the most publicized during Kolivosky's four-year term at the helm.

Hansen is believed to have killed 17 to 20 women, burying many near the Knik River. Police still aren't sure how many homicides he committed.

Kolivosky doesn't claim troopers cracked the case, but they did enter the investigation after some Anchorage police officers sought their help.

"They thought it wasn't being handled right so they got us involved," he said.

The FBI sent two representatives from the East Coast to help out. Kolivosky said they were just beginning the practice of profiling in those days, in which police look for patterns in crimes that may point to a perpetrator.

"We were the Wright brothers of profiling," Kolivosky said.

It led them to Hansen, and a search warrant was obtained for his house. Inside, police found a hidden compartment containing a map of the Knik River area and Xs marked at various places. They also found pieces of jewelry confirmed by victims' friends as having belonged to missing women.

"The problem with the case was that most of the victims were prostitutes or dancers," Kolivosky said. "These weren't normal people who'd gone missing."

Because of their transient lifestyles, he said, many of the women weren't noticed as missing for a long time.

"The bottom line is we caught a very dangerous guy and he's off the streets and will never see the light of day again," Kolivosky said. "There are evil people, and he was an evil person."

Another high profile case involved a three-month drug investigation in Juneau that led to 26 arrests, including several appointees in the Sheffield administration. A Palmer trooper went undercover after pretending to quit the force, then taking a job in a Juneau bar.

Troopers rented a house for parties and recorded several people making incriminating statements. One man, who Kolivosky said had been involved publicly with an anti-drug program, bragged about having sold drugs for 10 years.

Yet another Anchorage case involved cocaine smuggling and sales by a group of Dominican Republic citizens. Troopers worked with Anchorage police for nearly three months setting up the sting.

One member of the group somehow got wind of the impending bust, or at least got worried, and tried to warn the others, Kolivosky said. They didn't listen, but the man named Lucho left Anchorage two days before arrests were made.

Officers wore T-shirts proclaiming "Lucho was right" over their uniforms as they rounded up the suspects, Kolivosky said. Two dozen people were arrested, with $100,000 in cash and eight or nine kilos of cocaine confiscated.

"It tells you what kind of trafficking was going on here," Kolivosky said.

His dealings with the political world as trooper director left him a bit cynical.

"Between 60 legislators, the unions and everyone else I ran across more hypocrites," he said.

Kolivosky just smiles when friends ask about possible political ambitions these days. He's happy being a low-profile retiree.

"I've done everything I wanted to do and have been fairly successful," he said. "I don't have any what-ifs."