By Carole Firstman

Perhaps you’ve heard of him.

He’s Deputy Curtice, Public Information Officer for the Fresno Sheriff’s Department. He’s worn the shield for twenty-eight years. His heroic work as a detective is detailed in a true crime novel, a notorious case that has been the subject of numerous television docu-dramas.

But you might also know him as Chris Curtice, the hunky, blue eyed country-western singer for Chris Curtice and the Wild Horses. His melodic croon makes women swoon and draws fans to their feet. When he takes center stage the aisles are packed and the floor taps with the one-two rhythm of line dancing cowboy boots.

If you haven’t yet had the pleasure, please meet Chris Curtice: Sheriff by day, rising star by night.

Catch the Star

For more than a decade Curtice and his band have played extensively throughout the west coast. They’ve opened for Lee Greenwood, Sawyer Brown, Sara Evans, and Lori Morgan. They’ve jammed with Garth Brooks’ band on a cozy nightclub stage, drawn nods from governors and moved fans to tears. Their fourth CD, “Born to Be Wild,” is currently in studio production, and if you want to see them anytime soon, you’d best get your tickets in advance ‘cause they go fast.

Fresno fans were afforded an unusual treat this summer when the band played at Woodward Park as part of the city’s Concerts in the Park series. The next show won’t be nearly as intimate, but you can catch Chris Curtice and the Wild Horses at the Caruthers Fair in October.

Which Came First?

What an unlikely career combination, law enforcement and entertainment. So how did this peace officer become a country-western star? Or was it the other way around? The road to success has been a long, circuitous one for Curtice, one that started with music, merged with theater, took an unexpected but fortuitous turn to law enforcement, and then circled back to music again.

Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Chris Curtice has always loved music, but it wasn’t until much later in life that he discovered his gift for vocals. As a 10-year-old boy in his third-floor bedroom in a St. Louis neighborhood, he’d listen to melodies booming from the house across the driveway, 45-speed records spinning Motown tunes into the nighttime air. At some point young Curtice took up the guitar, and by the time he was a teenager, he was entrenched in the acting scene of high school theater. He a pursued drama as an undergraduate in Monterey, for a time thinking he’d make career in theater arts.

In college, however, Curtice discovered an overriding passion, a call to duty that would change his career path from theater to law. He took a few courses in criminology and justice, and before long he decided that law enforcement was his true professional calling. After earning a degree in criminology at CSU Fresno, he went to work with the Fresno County Sheriff’s department. Following seven years on patrol and thirteen years in homicide, he currently serves as Public Information Officer.

It was during his time as a homicide detective that Curtice, along with his partner John Souza, solved a particularly perplexing triple homicide. His story is the subject of Kraig Hanadel’s novel “Catch Me If You Can: A California Saga of Murder, Greed, and Two Heroic Detectives.”

“It was the Ewell homicide of 1992,” Curtice says, “a triple murder of a mother, father, and daughter.” Curtice and his partner focused their investigation on the family’s sole surviving son, a calculating, cold-blooded college student who stood to inherit his father’s millions. For three years the detectives kept at the case. All the while, the suspect taunted the detectives, daring the police to catch him. “And we did,” Curtice says. “We finally caught him.”

Although Curtice chose to make law enforcement his number one career priority, music always tugged at his heartstrings. Surprisingly, it wasn’t until 1995 that he sang publicly for the first time, at a karaoke night spot one hot July night. He did it on a dare, friends egging him on. “I never had any voice lessons in my life, no vocal training of any kind,” he says. “I’d listen to other people sing, but I was too self-conscious to sing in front of people. But that night I did it.”

The response was so overwhelming and his ability so obvious that he went back another night—and another and another. He eventually entered a talent competition in Las Vegas where he was invited to travel to Nashville and record a CD. In October of 1996 Curtice recorded his first release, “Forever Bound By the Heart.”

And thus the two roads finally merged, a journey that took Curtice full circle. The entertainer had become a sheriff, and now the sheriff could rightfully call himself a singer.

Rounding Up Wild Horses

Fast forward more than a decade, and Curtice’s band is riding high. He credits much of the band’s success to the team with which he works. “I’m really lucky to have full-time pros with me,” Curtice says. Along with Curtice, two other original members, Tony Quinn and Ray Haney, have been the mainstay of the group for the past thirteen years. Depending on the gig, the band ranges in size from four to ten members, but Curtice, Quinn, and Haney are the unwaivering core.

Haney plays bass and is a full-time professional musician who owns a recording studio in the Fresno area. He has a keen ability to direct the group with vocal arrangements. When it comes to composing original material, he’s got a knack for taking Quinn’s ideas and finding a way to make them work with the specific vocal traits of the band. “Performing three-part harmonies takes a tremendous amount of teamwork,” Haney says, “but it’s part of what makes our vocals so strong.”

Lead guitarist Quinn writes many of the songs Wild Horses performs. He’s toured throughout Germany, Spain, and Italy. Quinn lives in the Sacramento area where he also works as a producer in his own recording studio. “I’m sort of the idea man,” Quinn says. “I write the songs, Ray’s got a gifted ear for harmony, and Chris has a stellar voice. In a way, Chris is the vehicle for me to get my songs out there. We’re a team, and that’s why it works.”

It’s the duality of his life that seems to work for Chris Curtice, the ability to pursue more than one kind of dream. “There are different ways to define success,” he says. “I’m not a struggling musician looking for that ‘big break,’ I do this because I love it. Even if I stopped tomorrow, the music I’ve made will be here forever. It’s something I’ll always have.”

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