LAKEWOOD – Val Copeland draws portraits with spot-on detail – but not when her subjects are sitting in front of her.
Sometimes, the Lakewood woman doesn’t see the faces she’s drawing until they’re looking up at her from her page.
“You draw exactly what you see, not what you think the person’s supposed to look like,” said Copeland, 45, sitting in her living room with a notebook containing several of her sketches.
Copeland, who’s worked five years in the records division of the Arlington Police Department, recently began working as the department’s sketch artist.
In October, she sketched the face of a man suspected of carjacking a woman’s van with her two young children still inside. The drawing produced several leads that helped the investigation, Arlington Police Chief John Gray said.
“She’s so gifted,” Gray said. “It’s both a skill and an art to be able to translate the words and impressions that a victim or witness describes, and then put that into a graphic representation.”
Drawing isn’t Copeland’s only talent. She’s also passionate about carpentry.
She built footstools and bookcases for her living room, and a bench that sits by her front door. She’s especially proud of a table in her sitting room she built without nails or screws.
Copeland, who was raised in Arlington, also enjoys crafting. She recently made fuzzy, clay monster magnets that adorn the side of her refrigerator.
Many of her ideas come from magazines. Sometimes, ideas come to her in dreams.
“I get this idea in my head,” Copeland said. “It’s like I’m obsessed. I have to make it.”
Copeland didn’t start drawing until she was in middle school. She learned quickly. For a history project at Arlington High School, she drew charcoal portraits of several United States presidents. She still has the drawings.
Despite Copeland’s talent, her sister – a skilled painter and sculptor – already held the spotlight as the family’s budding artist.
“She’s so talented, it isn’t funny,” Copeland said. “I didn’t even pursue it because it wasn’t my thing.”
In 2001, Copeland started with the Arlington Police Department after earning a degree in criminal justice from Everett Community College.
Previously, she had worked at Boeing, where she assembled bundles of wires for airplanes.
Copeland has been the department’s sketch artist since late spring. She’s done three sketches so far.
When she finished her second sketch – a man with a mohawk suspected in an assault – police took one look at her drawing and knew who the man was, Copeland said.
The carjacking suspect was her most difficult drawing, she said.
To get details, she had to interview the young Marysville woman who’d just had her children kidnapped. The woman was having a hard time staying focused, Copeland said.
Eventually, the woman recalled enough details about the suspect to help Copeland fine-tune her sketch.
In late October, police arrested a man in connection with the carjacking.
Copeland said her sketch is almost identical to the man’s Department of Licensing photo.
“I’m glad police can use me like this and get some kind of results,” she said.
Reporter Scott Pesznecker: 425-339-3436 or spesznecker@heraldnet.com.
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