Career changes

Jackson is a proud Texan, never mind that he has been an Oklahoma resident for more than half a century. How proud? He found a way for grandchildren to simultaneously be born in Oklahoma and over Texas soil. Someone who resorts to such extremes could be accused of being eccentric. He admits in print that family members have sometimes been embarrassment by his off-the-wall ideas and projects.

Jackson, who hails from Copperas Cove, Texas, was raised poor, but not hungry. He learned the value of hard work early, heading to the cotton fields at age 7 and later taking jobs — paper route, cleaning a drive-in theater, burning trash — to ensure his pockets wouldn’t stay empty.

Jackson wrote that he was a skinny kid when he left home at age 18 with only $10 (which would amount to about $100 today) and the clothes on his back. He joined the Navy and served 4½ years as a radar/communication air crewman. His time in the Navy coincided with the Vietnam War, but he did not serve in Vietnam.

“We were training people to die in our place,” he said. “That’s just the hard way to say it.”

Random story from the Navy years: Jackson and one of his Navy pals took a couple of girls on a date to a steak house. A stranger picked up the tab. The book details how the story got a bonus happy ending decades later.

Jackson gave white collar life a try after the Navy. He entered the insurance business in San Antonio. Subsequent job changes included a transfer to Tulsa, where he put down roots.

“After six years in the corporate world with a nice office, plaques on the wall and a mahogany desk, I also realized those things were only important to people who didn’t have them,” he wrote.

Bored, Jackson wondered if there was something more interesting on the horizon. In 1976, one of Jackson’s employees, Carl Kime, said he was quitting to attend the police academy. The more Jackson thought about Carl, the more he envied him. Jackson, who had always wanted to be a cop, resigned and was accepted into the police academy at age 34. Jackson said the age cut-off at that time was 35.

Jackson wrote that he took a substantial pay cut in his new profession, but he didn’t care because he was living the dream.

Crime Stoppers pioneer

Jackson was a rookie cop with 14 months of experience when he was selected for the Crime Stoppers program. The program sprang from the Citizens Crime Commission.

Said a 1979 Tulsa World story: The Old West had its wanted posters. Widely circulated in post offices through our expanding country, they enabled citizens to help law enforcement officers find fugitives. Crime Stoppers is just an updated version of the wanted poster.

Crime Stoppers was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and by May 1979, Tulsa was among 26 cities with varying forms of implementation. The local version had Jackson choosing one local crime per week to be re-enacted (by local actors and willing citizens) in a mini-movie.

Viewers of Crime Stoppers could call a phone number if they had information to share about the crime du jour or any crime. A financial incentive — a reward for “successful” tipsters — was part of the program.

Harry Stege, then Tulsa’s police chief, summoned Jackson for a meeting that led to him being the Crime Stoppers coordinator. Jackson said one reason he was chosen is because he had been involved in various forms of part-time entertainment since he was 12 or 13 years old, an apparel model and thespian.

Jackson’s high school speech and drama teacher told him she would drive him to Baylor University if he would agree to audition for a theater company’s show. He got hired and did a “long” season with the company.

“Then I decided that full-time acting was a hard way to make a good living, but it was a real easy way to starve to death,” Jackson said. “In fact, I often thought I should have, with my first paycheck, bought a handheld bathroom mirror with which I could watch myself starve to death.”

Jackson continued to keep a toe in the modeling and entertainment world, which is how he landed a role (more on this later) in The Outsiders. But on the topic of Crime Stoppers, Jackson said some were skeptical that the program would be of any benefit. He made an every-Monday drive to his office to check out tips that followed the TV segments.

“And sure enough, I was solving some cases,” he said. “The first ( Crime Stoppers segment) I made, I had that puppy in the bag within three weeks.”

In Crime Stoppers’ first 15 months, the program contributed to the resolution of 150 cases with 119 arrests and the recovery of stolen property valued at $458,465, according to Citizens Crime Commission figures cited in Jackson’s book.

Jackson said he loved Crime Stoppers so much that he almost worked himself to death — and someone tried to help him get there. A shooter took a crack at him from an overpass while he was driving to the office. He said the bullet hit the hood, deflecting the shot toward the rearview mirror. Speaking from experience, Jackson said you can find the floorboard of a car while driving 45 miles an hour.

Because Tulsa’s Crime Stoppers initiative proved worthwhile, Jackson was asked to assist police departments in other cities establish similar programs.

“Hell, I did as much teaching as anything else,” he said.

Making his way to the screen

Countless Tulsans became extras in The Outsiders, including Heather Langenkamp, who starred in “A Nightmare on Elm Street” the following year.

Jackson, because he was connected to the entertainment realm, had an agent prior to casting for The Outsiders. He threw his hat — and his mug shots — into the ring for the film, based on a classic young adult novel by Tulsa author S.E. Hinton.

Photos of Jackson as a farmer had graced a farm equipment supplier’s catalog, so a photo of him as a farmer was in a portfolio submitted for The Outsiders. He was cast as a farmer.

When Jackson reported for duty, he was asked if he could ride a motorcycle.

“Yeah, I used to race them,” he replied.

And, just like that, the real cop became a movie motorcycle cop, which proved to be a blessing as Jackson said the farmer part was cut before filming began.

Jackson is proud to say his scene was captured in one take, “and I understand that Coppola was the retake king.”

Jackson acquired a Screen Actors Guild card for the film, which led to union scale pay and, more importantly, residual checks.

“I got residuals for 41½ years,” he said. “The golden goose, I knew she was sick, but she passed away last September.”

Jackson said he didn’t keep very good track of the residual payments, but he figures they amounted to somewhere between $15,000 and $20,000.

“In the early years, I was knocking it down,” he said.

Jackson said the last residual check was for two cents. He didn’t cash it.

“If I can figure out where I laid it, I’m going to have it framed,” he said.

Jackson said he did “a little spot” in another movie, “Oklahoma Bound,” and “if you wanted to see the movie, you better do it damn quick because it was on its way out the day it came in.” During an interview at his ranch home, he also made a case for being credited as a chicken wrangler for his behind-the-scenes work in the 1985 direct-to-VHS film “Blood Cult.”

Of course, his newest credit is author.

Born storyteller

Jackson said he puts a lot of “stuff” on Facebook. Readers of his social media posts urged him to write a book. “So I whipped that puppy out,” he said.

Puppies? The only things Jackson might love more than Texas are his family (even though a ninth great-grandmother was once accused of witchcraft), kids and critters. He eats chicken fried, grilled and barbecued, but he likes chickens best when they are running around in his backyard. (He didn’t write a recipe book, but it contains a recipe for baked raccoon.)

In person or in the book, you don’t have to pry stories out of Jackson. He jokes that he was vaccinated with a stereo needle when he was a kid and became a motor mouth.

Significant portions of the book are devoted to family and law enforcement experiences, including a plea to help him solve a cold case from 1984. Readers may enjoy two going-above-the-call-of-duty tales from his TPD experiences. He responded to a call about a domestic situation and wound up saving a marriage, thanks in part to finding new jobs for the couple. In 1999, a University of Tulsa foreign student’s eyeglasses were broken when he was robbed. The cash-strapped student was worried he wouldn’t be able to see well enough to take final exams. Jackson arranged for a replacement set of eyeglasses. The student called Jackson decades later to thank him.

“I experienced or witnessed joy and celebration beyond imagination — also grief and tragedy near the edge of endurance,” Jackson wrote, adding that he was run over twice, attacked with a meat cleaver, bitten, was part of too many fights to remember and was in two car crashes.

“Yep, pretty much typical of any cop’s career,” Jackson wrote. “I had a ball.”

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