YOUR SPACE: The security guard and his purse dogs

The brawny security guard walks through Acacia Park, his billy club swinging, stun gun fully charged and handcuffs at the ready.

Matt Matthews is a Vietnam vet and a tough guy.

But try telling that to the two little purse dogs pulling him by the leash.

The dogs, Sophie and Spike, call the shots when Matt is not guarding the gems at their owner’s Tejon Street shop, Bryan & Scott Jewelers.

On this day, the terriers strut down the sidewalk in matching Ralph Lauren plaid jackets more Central Park than Acacia Park. Contrast their wardrobe with Matt’s blue jacket with “SECURITY” on the back.

(See a video of Matt, Sophie and Spike at gazette.com/yourspace.)

Dog duty comes with his job at the shop.

His guard desk sits between the two doggy beds where the pampered pets loll.

He jumps at their command: “They tell me when it’s time to ‘go,’” he says of the tail-waggers.

Shrapnel in his foot, which earned him a Purple Heart, doesn’t stop Matt from his critical mission of taking laps around the park.

Armed with plastic poop bags, of course.

It all goes with the turf for Matt, who has owned a security agency, nabbed shoplifters for Pinkerton and was a Manitou Springs reserve police officer.

Retirement isn’t an option for Matt, 70, who has raised his autistic 16-year-old grandson since birth.

He has guarded Bryan & Scott before for 10 years and is a fixture of sorts.
“Everyone thinks I’m a statue,” he says. “I sit here real quiet. They walk right past me and never see me.”

Maybe so, but he sees them.

“I see everything,” he says.

What he can’t see, cameras see for him in the art gallery and downstairs furniture showroom.

“Kids from Palmer come in here and sometimes horse around,” he says. “I tell them. ‘It’s not the gym. There’s too much valuable stuff. Please, if you want to horse, go outside.’ They say, ‘OK, sir.’ I just talk to them. If you respect them, they’ll respect you.”

Words don’t always work. The 5-foot-4 guard has broken up fights while strolling Acacia Park.

“I probably shouldn’t have, but I didn’t want to see anybody get hurt,” he says. “My wife tells me: ‘You’re not John Wayne.’”

Yeah, but his colleagues seem to think he is.

“People don’t think he’s as strong as he is,” co-worker Cheryl Smith says, telling how Matt protected her from thugs in the alley. “Just like that, there was somebody on the ground.”

He admits to a “Don’t mess with Matt” side. “Let’s put it this way: I can be a nice person,” he says. “And I can be a sorry person.”

The next minute, he’s warm goo: “Huh, Spike, I love you, yes, I do,” he croons as Sophie noses in for a kiss.

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Gazette Andrea Brown