WE'VE BEEN LOOKING back at 50 glorious years of RTÉ and marvelling at how they've managed to keep us entertained over an entire half century. Oh, there are the carpers who claim that the national broadcaster hasn't always delivered on televisual thrills and spills, but one show, broadcast in the late 1970s and early 1980s most definitely fulfilled RTÉ's public service remit. Officer Frank "Ponch" Poncherello and his partner Jonathan "Jon" Baker were freewheeling down the freeways of California on their motorcycles, sorting out traffic pile-ups and sniffing out criminals in the US TV series CHiPs.
With his lantern jaw and Hispanic looks Estrada quickly became telly-land’s biggest heartthrob, and posters of Ponch in his California Highway Patrolman’s uniform standing next to his motorcycle adorned the bedrooms of teenagers around the world. Such was the verisimilitude Estrada brought to the role, it’s no surprise to find that he went on to become a real cop – sort of. He was made a reserve officer in Muncie, Indiana, and a deputy sheriff in Virginia. He’s a committed anti-drugs advocate and a crusader for children’s safety online. Recently, he became a “taskforce officer” with the Safe Surfin’ Foundation.
The handsome young latino from New York's Spanish Harlem area didn't just coast from nowhere into the role of Ponch. He got his first movie role in 1970, starring opposite Pat Boone in The Cross and the Switchblade,and also featured in the blockbuster disaster movie Airport 1975. He also appeared in episodes of nearly every TV cop/crimefigher series of the 1970s, including Hawaii Five-O, Kojak, Mannix, Baretta, Barnaby Jonesand The Six Million Dollar Man.
One obstacle stood between Estrada and TV immortality – he couldn’t ride a motorcycle. He had to do a crash course in motorcycling to prepare for his role in CHiPs – alas, it didn’t prevent him from coming a cropper while filming an episode, breaking both wrists and several ribs.
CHiPs ran from 1977 to 1983 on US TV, but thanks to reruns and syndication, Ponch rode on way past the series' final season. When he wasn't basking in his global fame, Estrada starred in several low-budget movies, and trod the boards off-Broadway in such plays as Sam Shepard's True West.
In the early 1990s, he took the role of a trucker in a series that became a huge smash – on Latin American TV. He also reprised his role as Ponch in videos by Bad Religionand Butthole Surfers, and in the made-for-TV movie, CHiPs '99. A cinema version of CHiPs, starring Wilmer Valderrama (the voice of Disney's Handy Manny) as Ponch, was scheduled for 2011, but so far there's no definite release date. In recent years, Estrada has benefited from two guaranteed career-rejuvenators: cartoon voiceovers and reality dance shows – he has been strutting his stuff in spangly outfits on Latin America's own Strictly Come Dancing, Mira Quien Baila.
Last summer, Estrada, now 62, was seen once again patrolling the highways of Los Angeles, when the California Department of Transportation recruited him to star in two public service broadcasts – one in English and one in Spanish – alerting citizens to the temporary closure of Interstate 405.
