Young didn't return calls for this article.
Following the initial probe and Hegarty's criticism of Halliday, the director demoted Hegarty to captain and kicked him out of his job as Highway Patrol chief.
Above: The shot of Jack Hegarty (left) and Tim Mason at a D-backs game that sparked the investigation. Behind Hegarty is Karen Rasmussen of the Arizona Trucking Association. Below: Hegarty's check for the tickets wasn't cashed until after he was told he'd be investigated.
Robert Halliday, director of the Arizona Department of Public Safety.
Related Content
More About
Halliday then turned over the investigation to the Phoenix Police Department to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, and Phoenix Internal Affairs Detective Eric Pagone, as well as other Phoenix IA investigators, began taking a look at the case in early November.
Pagone interviewed Hegarty on November 14 and 15, and Hegarty claimed Dennis Young never asked him who paid for the tickets and that he didn't say the ATA paid for them.
Hegarty says he was asked who "provided" the tickets and that he'd told Young it was Karen Rasmussen, president of the ATA.
But, Hegarty told the Phoenix detective, the tickets weren't owned by the ATA but by Rasmussen personally or, perhaps, by another ATA member. He said he'd been to "about" six games in 2011 using tickets he'd purchased from Rasmussen.
Hegarty presented to investigators a cashed check he'd written for $800 to Rasmussen in May 2011, saying it was to pay for baseball tickets he'd bought from her. Nothing's written in the memo field of the check, making it impossible to know what the check was for.
It may have no bearing, though: Hegarty admits in the report and in his interview with New Times that he accepted free tickets from Rasmussen in 2010. The investigation showed he went to at least one game with Rasmussen and Halliday in 2009.
The total number of games attended by all DPS officials over the years isn't known; the investigation concerned the September 8 incident.
Before the game in question, Hegarty told the detective that Rasmussen had called him and mentioned she had tickets available.
Hegarty maintained that he paid Rasmussen $300 for the four tickets at the season-ticket-holder price of $75 each — but that he didn't pay her right away.
He'd had the check in his wallet that day but forgot to give it to her, he said.
The check, dated September 8, cleared the bank on October 5, the investigation showed, two days after Hegarty was interviewed by Young.
It was deposited into ATA's checking account — not Rasmussen's.
When interviewed by Detective Pagone in mid-November, Captain Ken Hunter said he was "unaware" that the tickets — which he estimated to be worth $100 to $120 — had come from the ATA or Rasmussen. He said he only found out later, after talking to Hegarty on October 31, that his companion at the game claimed he'd bought the tickets from Rasmussen.
Hunter said it was the first time he'd been to a D-backs game, and Hegarty had "inferred" that going to the game was a "team-building" experience that wasn't optional, he told Pagone.
Hunter admitted that the ATA's board of directors "have a vested interest in the trucking industry" and that he would "not feel comfortable accepting tickets from the ATA."
Yet he also admitted he'd heard rumors that DPS officials routinely accepted free tickets from the ATA.
Hunter submitted a written statement to investigators saying he "was not told where the tickets came from, nor did I ask."
A week later, e-mails pulled from the DPS supervisors' work accounts showed Hunter and Hegarty knew exactly where the tickets came from.
"ATA has four club box tickets for this game and would like to invite you to be our guests," Rasmussen told Hegarty, Hunter, Chavez, and Coleman in a September 1 e-mail at 10:13 a.m. "Let me know if you're interested. (however, only one parking pass)"
About 90 minutes later, Hegarty was the first to get back to her.
"I am," he wrote. "I'll take the parking pass, they can walk."
Rasmussen, whom Hegarty told investigators was his friend, jokingly replied to all four that Hegarty could "charge them for a ride & impose a surcharge on the parking. Just a thought."
Coleman shot back, "Karen he does not need any help with this. We may have to rent seats in his vehicle to get there."
Rasmussen replied to the group, teasing Hunter that he hadn't "weighed in on this important discussion . . . but I'm probably interrupting something important that you're doing."
Hunter didn't reply, but he later admitted to Pagone that he'd seen the e-mail. He and Hegarty had to backtrack in their statements to the investigator, saying their earlier statements had been miscommunication, not dishonesty.
A letter of reprimand went into Hunter's permanent file.
Included in the report was a September 6 e-mail discussion between Chavez and Rasmussen that helps represent the routine nature of these ticket offers. When Chavez informs Rasmussen that he can't make the September 8 game as planned, she gets back to him a few hours later: "Bummer. I have an extra ticket for the afternoon game on Sept. 21. Think you can get off work to go?
Chavez doesn't question who would pay for the ticket. He simply tells her he'll be in St. Louis for the National Trooper's Coalition meeting that week.
A spokesman for Chavez at the Arizona Highway Patrol Association said Chavez would make a statement about his involvement, but he never got back to New Times.
