Keld Hove says he has to help others: “If not me, then who?”

Keld Hove doesn’t see suffering and move on.  He rolls up his sleeves and asks: How can I help?

Keld came to Los Angeles in 1986 as an au pair.  At 19, he taught martial arts at a Chuck Norris school.  There, three years later, he met his wife, Lara.  They moved to Santa Barbara where Lara finished school.

“It’s beautiful here,” Keld said.  “Can we stay?”

Decision made, Keld, who comes from Denmark—a country known for beautiful woodwork— began building cabinets and furniture.  Several years later, his brother-in-law, a police officer, took him along on some patrol rides. Keld was intrigued.  Lara suggested he become a police officer.

Keld tested to join the police department. He was one of two or three chosen from about 400 applicants.  He studied for six months at a police academy.  A few months later, he caught one of America’s most notorious bank robbers.

Keld spent 25 years as a patrol officer in Santa Barbara.  He worked in community relations, training relations and taught as an instructor.  He spearheaded restorative policing, helping those with “inappropriate behavior” due to drug addictions, homelessness or mental problems.

The experience changed him.

For people who create a minor nuisance, such as nudity or peeing or yelling in public, Keld says officers have limited options.  “They can order offenders to leave or write a ticket or take them to jail.  The track of options has been broken for years.  Agencies deal with so much red tape. Small crimes clog the court system.”

Keld took a different approach, helping offenders to access “better choices.”  He escorted them to a detox or mental health facility or to find housing or employment. He helped them reconnect with family.

Keld collaborated with then Santa Barbara D.A. Joyce Dudley to set up a free trial arrangement.  Working with Keld and a team of public defenders, local shelters and homeless advocates, offenders who agreed to get more constructive, rehabilitative help could have charges dismissed.

Such people, Keld says, “often tended to self-sabotage or relapse.”  But they’d call Keld for help.  He drove them to shelters or appointments.  He gave a presentation at Stanford about his restorative methods.  His talk was attended by police officers from around the country.

Unfortunately, Keld says, COVID stopped the momentum of his programs. But he soon figured out other ways to help people in distress.

In January, 2018, mudslides in Montecito, CA, caused debris flow.  Then a policeman, Keld was standing on a corner preventing people from returning to their homes.  One woman said her husband and son were missing; she wanted to return home to see if she could find their bodies.

“That’s a heavy thing to hear,” Keld says.  He wrote her a permission slip.

The encounter changed him.

“I’d been helping repeat customers,” he says.  “I wanted to make a more lasting difference, to step in and help people on a one-time basis.  I wanted to help people help themselves.”

Among his many talents, Keld is a baker. He teaches bread baking in adult ed classes, specializing in sourdough. “All it takes is flour, water and salt.  I realized bread baking could be an easy way to help.”

Keld chose to get involved after the acute disaster phase.  “At first FEMA and the Red Cross and the media rush in.  I decided to focus on the recovery phase a few months later.  While some residents in disaster-struck areas are soon back to their lives and tennis games, others face years of obstacles.”  These obstacles can include building permits, finances, insurance claims, and loss of jobs and schools and other community infrastructures.

When hurricanes Irma and Maria hit the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico in 2017, Keld traveled to St. Croix and volunteered at a boys and girls club, helping to rebuild the facility’s roof.  While there, he taught local kids how to bake sourdough bread and pizza.

“I had 50 kids and parents learning together.  They loved it.  It was a joy see them get so excited.”

Next he traveled to Puerto Rico, which still had no electricity five months after Hurricane Maria.  Keld volunteered at a restaurant and taught restaurant owners how to make sourdough bread rolls.  He visited the island of Vieques and showed owners of a home bakery how to make a sourdough starter.

Learning about Jose Andreas’ World Central Kitchen, which provides food relief to disaster areas, Keld decided to create his own non-profit agency.  He named it Phoenix Bread Rising.

A friend told Keld about a Crow Indian reservation in Montana reeling from the COVID pandemic. The tribe of about 7,900 members was suffering from poor diets, a lack of health services and suicides; one man knew 18 people who had died in just one year.

Keld drove to the reservation and taught them how to bake his type of bread. “I showed compassion and helped with the little bit I could.”

He traveled to Krakow, Poland to work in a refugee shelter with 33 Ukrainian women and children. Helping them to bake “gave them dignity, purpose, skills and the ability to sell bread to their neighbors.”

When COVID prevented Keld from traveling, he donated  bread to anyone in Santa Barbara who had lost their job due to the pandemic.  Through posts on Facebook and pop-ups,  he gave out “hundreds” of loaves.

Keld plans to take his bread baking skills to American Samoa and New Zealand.  In the latter, his doctor friend “works with the underserved Maori population.”  Keld will conduct classes at a hospital.

Four years ago, the 70-year-old pharmacy for which Keld’s  wife did bookkeeping was closing.  The San Ysidro Pharmacy was “an old-fashioned mom and pop neighborhood place” with 15 long-time employees.  It specializes in compounding hormones and medications and weight loss management.  Loath to see the business close, several neighbors arranged for a private loan.  Keld and his wife took over the pharmacy “in the middle of COVID,” in March, 2021.

Keld also practices and teaches martial arts and is a licensed massage therapist helping people with sports injuries.

A back injury sustained during the arrest of a homeless drug addict forced Keld to retire from the police department last year after 25 years.  But he’s still giving back.  He now conducts seminars on psychological first aid and how to create peer support teams for first responders and disaster personnel.

“I didn’t realize how much psychological help is needed by the average police officer and other first responders.  Witnessing so much suffering on the job can lead to PTSD.  The results of traffic accidents and drownings can’t be unseen.

“People say: suck it up.  You signed up for this.  But the highest suicide rates are among fire fighters.  More police officers die from their own guns than from the guns of others.”

Keld is somewhat of a celebrity in his home country.  Since 2018, he’s been featured on a weekly Danish Discovery Channel.  Viewers experience what it’s like to work as a police officer in the U.S.  Keld currently works with officers in Denmark who’ve lost their jobs due to physical injuries and/or PTSD.

Keld and Lara have been married 36 years.  Their sons Aade and Kai also work in the pharmacy.  The Hoves live in a unique custom house, which Keld helped rebuild.  They share their home with two Akitas, Aiko and Mila.

Keld sums up his philosophy in five words: “If not me, then who?” His “greatest joy,” he says, “is to make someone’s life better in their time of need.”

Thanks, Keld, for sharing your story.  And for living the Lord’s Prayer, for giving so many others emotional support and daily bread.