Adam-12 is an American television police procedural crime drama television series created by Robert A. Cinader and Jack Webb. It followed veteran Police Officer II Pete Malloy, Badge 744 (Martin Milner), and Police Officer I Jim Reed, Badge 2430 (Kent McCord). To make the show even more realistic they used a real police radio dispatcher, Shaaron Claridge.
Shaaron was born October 10, 1938, in Los Angeles County, California. At the time she joined the force women were primarily desired as police radio dispatchers because LAPD psychologists thought that women’s voices would have a more soothing and calming effect over the airwaves.
Her husband was an LAPD motorcycle officer. In the late 1960s, Shaaron began her secondary career as a voice actress. She primarily was the dispatch voice for Adam-12 but also did some work for other shows such as Dragnet, The Rockford Files, Lou Grant, and Columbo. She appeared once, on-screen with Martin Milner in the fifth season episode, “Suspended”.
She even got a couple of movie parts as an LAPD dispatcher in “Blue Thunder” (1983), starring Roy Scheider, and in the 1970 Disney film “The Boatniks”. Shaaron was a pilot, past President of the Douglas County Republican Women, Member of Tahoe-Douglas Elks Lodge 2670, active RV’r, and Secretary of the Nevada Elks State Association. She died on September 15, 2021, in Minden, Nevada of complications due to liver cancer at the age of 82. She was married to Robert Snead.
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