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Criminals love her, the innocent crave her attention, and the judicial system isn’t complete without her. 

She is LeeAnn Curtis, owner of Alder Creek Bail Bonds, a 7-year-old agency with offices in Berkeley and Truckee that assists suspects in posting bail through Northern California. Curtis, with long, styled blonde hair, big eyes, long lashes, and a charming, chubby-cheek smile, looks more like a soccer mom than a bonds woman.  

But, she says, she loves her job and the control it gives her. 

“I wanted to do my own thing,” Curtis said in a telephone interview from her home in Truckee. “It’s kinda like you get to a point in your life where you want to be your own boss.” 

So, in 1993, while pregnant with her first child, she quit her 9 to 5 marketing job in favor of owning her own company. And for Curtis, the bail bonds business was virtually no risk. Someone is always going to jail, she said. 

“While my kids are sleeping, I’m working,” Curtis said. “I really started it so I had something to do while I was having babies because I can go out and work at night and be a mom during the day.” 

In actuality, however, she is raising her children, a 7-year-old, 6-year-old twins and a 3-year-old, between jailhouse phone calls. 

Prime time for a bail bond agent is after midnight, but the phone rings 24-hours-a-day. 

“Basically all the calls come to me,” she said, explaining that the 27 local and one toll free number are routed to her in Truckee. “I interview clients, try to determine how stable they are and then I decide at that point if we need collateral. It’s kinda like this: if I don’t feel like the person’s a good risk, I’m not gonna write the bail I don’t really want to chase people all over creation.” 

It’s that occasional chase, despite selectively approving clients, that gives Curtis a rush. When a client she has posted bail for doesn’t show, the courts send a notice of forfeiture, and it’s up to Curtis to switch from bondsman to bounty hunter. 

“I don’t sleep when I have that going on because I don’t want to pay that bail,” she said. “If I don’t catch them I have to pay it. Many times they really don’t ever expect someone to come after them and locating them is really the hardest part. People get around.” 

She brightens up at the recollection of hunts for her fugitive clients. 

“I had this one guy call and tell me he was on the run and he kept calling me,” she said. “He wasn’t even thinking I had Caller ID, so I knew where he was the whole time – in Washington.” Curtis said she “just played along” like she wanted to help. Using her “little girl sweet voice” – a high pitched, sing-song, almost dreamy sound – she encouraged him to return. 

But with a $15,000 bond at risk, she also alerted the border patrol. 

“They forget that you’re the bail agent and they think that you’re their friend and as soon as they do that, you’ve got ’em!” 

Lulled by Curtis’ valley girl style, filled with enough “kinda like,” “cool,” and “ya’know” to make even the most apprehensive criminal feel comfortable, the Washington wanderer offered to sign his house over. Curtis then simply had to ask where to send some Federal Express documents and, “He gave me the address where he was staying and I had someone there in 15 minutes. He was here by 8-o’clock the next morning,” she said. 

For Curtis, a successful capture means a chance to retain the profit from the bond. 

“It’s about liability,” she said. “The insurance company I write for is liable to the court, I am liable to the insurance company, and the client is liable to me.” 

Charging them a fee of 10 percent of the total bail, regulated federally, her livelihood depends on clients appearing in court. If the risk of flight seems too great, Curtis just wont approve a bond without security.  

“I don’t want to be personally liable for someone,” she said. Sometimes this means retaining property titles that she would foreclose on should the client miss a court appearance. Other times, it’s the family posting the bond collateral that makes it happen. 

“Part of writing a good bond is getting a support group for the individual  

because if they have mom on the hook or their sister on the hook, or somebody they love on the hook, they are not going to mess around,” Curtis said. “I’m real careful, I make sure I always have a parent tied in.” And quite often, those parents revoke the bail when their child seems likely to disappear. 

“All the time I get parents calling in to say, ‘Well junior isn’t really behaving and he’s still doing drugs and hanging out with the wrong people. I don’t want to pay this bail, will you just pick him up? I have parents doing that all the time.” 

But despite her precautions, a client or two inevitably gets away without a trace. 

Curtis said she usually has to pay one bond a year for untraceable clients. 

Nevertheless Curtis loves her work. “Every client and every day is different,” she said. “If I get one bond, I’m happy.” 

Although she says, “It’s a job that isn’t for everyone.”