Mario Lopez does not wake up in the morning and drive to a job where he works in an indistinguishable modular cubicle.

He does not spend day after day behind some innocuous beige metal desk, performing the same mundane tasks over and over again as he stares at an impersonal computer screen. He does not clock out every evening wondering if his accomplishments of the day really matter in the grand scheme of things.

Lopez chose a vocation that is rarely the same from one day to the next. He chose a profession that elicits respect in most, fear in some.

He chose a job that would allow him to affect the lives of a great many people. Lopez chose to be an officer in the California Highway Patrol.

In the 10 years Lopez has worked for the CHP, he has many fond memories, but it's the tragedies that first come to mind when he's asked to recall the days that have affected him most.

Lopez has seen far too many injuries and deaths that could have been prevented if people had simply taken the time to buckle up.

There are also many days when the unpredictability of his job puts Lopez in the center of incredible and unusual circumstances.

He cannot forget the afternoon he spent assisting a family that had gotten into a collision - actually, several collisions.

The family was moving. The wife was driving her car behind the moving van, and her husband was following in a vehicle behind her. When the moving van stopped suddenly, the wife crashed into the back of the van, and the husband smashed into the back of his wife's car.

Apparently this family was very close - in more ways than one.

That recollection is one of many.

On the 210 Freeway a few years ago, Lopez encountered the most memorable traffic violator he would ever meet.

As he drove next to a car driving in the carpool lane, he noticed that the driver appeared to be traveling alone. As Lopez looked at the man, the driver started pointing emphatically to the back seat, as if to indicate there was a passenger behind him.

The tint on the windows made it impossible to see into the back seat, so Lopez pulled his cruiser behind the vehicle. Just as he did, the man panicked and broke his first law of the day - he drove over the double yellow lines and out of the carpool lane.

When Lopez turned on his lights, the driver just kept motioning vigorously toward the back seat, but would not pull over. Finally, Lopez used the cruiser's PA system to direct the driver to the side of the road. As Lopez got out, the driver indicated that there was a baby in the car seat behind him. Lopez looked into the back seat, and while he could see a little hand, he noticed it was not moving.

He instructed the driver to roll down the rear window. After several minutes of listening to excuses as to why the window would not roll open, Lopez simply reached through the front window, pulled up the lock and opened the back door.

In the car seat, there sat a lifelike, yet most definitely plastic, baby doll.

After the violator tried unsuccessfully to get out of the citations he received during a court appearance, he had only one question for Officer Lopez: "Can I please have my doll back?"

Lopez, who had been relegated to carrying the toy through the halls of justice, was only too happy to comply.

It takes a special kind of person to balance the demands of a job where character and compassion are equally measured.

The CHP are always looking for more people like Lopez and maintain active recruiting information on their Web site at www.chp.ca.gov.