San Francisco police officer Chris Kohrs is hotter than the devil's backside on an August day in Georgia. At 36, and almost six feet tall, Kohrs looks like he just stepped out of a GQ centerfold. He’s upsettingly handsome, he’s got one of those smiles you see in toothpaste commercials and a body that would make Mario Lopez run to the gym. All that would be tolerable if he were an arrogant jerk, or just plain dumb. Sadly, he is neither.
“It’s been pretty crazy,” says Kohrs when I tracked him down in his hometown. “They call me ‘Castro’s Finest’ now.”
These days Kohrs is enjoying the popularity usually reserved for Hollywood stars. He’s had dozens of articles written about him, he’s got his own fan club and just in the last couple of days he’s been approached to appear on magazine covers and even Good Morning America.
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In his six years on the force, Kohrs has kicked some Grade A ass. Once he lunged at a man trying to rob a convenience store, subduing him with his bare hands. Another time, he came to the rescue of a young woman whose iPhone had been snatched by a petty thief. Kohrs, who wasn’t even on duty at the time, heard the girl screaming for help and chased the perpetrator on foot until finally tackling him to the ground. The phone was later returned to its stunned owner, who must have felt like an extra in a superhero movie.
Kohrs is one cool dude under fire. But all his training and experience couldn’t have prepared him for what happened when a stranger on the street asked to take his picture. Kohrs, who was assigned to the legendary gay Castro district that day, obliged. It was just another civilian showing support for the SFPD. Or so he thought.
Turns out, the man from the Castro was gay novelist Mark Abramson. And Abramson’s innocent Facebook post about a young cop, whose name he didn’t even know, quickly went viral, sparking a mini-sensation within the gay community. Soon, social media feeds from coast to coast (and even across the pond) were blowing up with pictures of the young officer’s chiseled face. It wasn’t long before gay blogs and news sites took notice, writing articles about Kohrs, who became known simply as “The Hot Cop of Castro Street.”
What’s most surprising about all this is the fact that Kohrs had no inkling any of it was happening. “I’m not really a Facebook kinda guy,” he says. He actually first got wind of the story after his colleagues printed out some of the articles and taped them all over the precinct walls. “I was never going to live that down,” he says, laughing.
Then, Kohrs got another shout-out, this time from one of the city’s most famous residents, Armistead Maupin, author of the best-selling series Tales of the City. Maupin posted a picture of Kohrs on his Facebook page with the caption: “I finally got to lay eyes on the legendary Hot Cop of Castro Street.” Kohrs was now a bona-fide gay-lebrity with A-list admirers.
It didn’t hurt that Kohrs could be Channing Tatum’s twin brother in Magic Mike. He looks like he’s been plucked straight out of central casting. And then, of course, there’s that uniform.
“He looks like a porn star,” says Abramson, the man responsible for Kohrs’s newfound fame. “But of course, he’s anything but. He’s just a really nice guy.”
It didn’t take long before the gays came flocking down to the Castro to see the hot cop everyone’s been talking about. And not just men. “I’d jump the fence for that,” said Donna Merlino, a 54-year-old lesbian from San Francisco. Merlino says she first noticed him on her Facebook feed and quickly became a die-hard Kohrs fan. “He looks so sweet and innocent, with a hint of sexuality.”
Ironically, the man who wasn’t even on Facebook now has his own Facebook fan page. “Obviously his good looks were the initial reason he caught everyone's attention, but when people started to recognize him and talk to him, they saw what a great guy he was,” says Nathan Tatterson, creator of Kohrs’ fan page. “He is nice, funny, and professional, traits most people don't associate with police officers these days.” The page, which was created on June 26, has already garnered an impressive 9,500 likes in only a few weeks.
Kohrs is getting attention far beyond the Bay Area. According to Tatterson, he has admirers from as far as Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and even Pakistan. But, aside from the United States, the biggest country that’s gone gaga over Kohrs is France. “In France, we are not used to that kind of gay-friendly officer, and that's why I had a crush on him,” says Philippe Lowinski, a 53-year-old from the suburbs of Paris. Lowinski became so enamored with Kohrs, he’s traveling all the way to San Francisco in August just to meet him. “He seems like such a nice guy. En plus il est charmant,” he says in French, meaning, he’s also very charming.
It’s a far cry from the White Night riots, in May of 1979, when gay men stormed San Francisco’s City Hall following the lenient sentencing of Dan White, a city supervisor charged with murdering Harvey Milk months earlier. White had been convicted of voluntary manslaughter, the lightest possible sentence for his crime. The announcement triggered a violent reaction from the gay community, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage, as well as injuries to police officers. Cops then retaliated with a raid of their own on a gay bar in the Castro.
“As a child and teenager, I feared the police and hated them. They were awful,” says gay rights activist and San Francisco resident Cleve Jones. “They were violent and homophobic and racist. When I arrived here, the cops were a symbol of what we were fighting against.”
Public relations guru Howard Bragman says the SFPD “is well aware that this is helping build a bridge to one of their most important constituencies in San Francisco.”
It’s no surprise then, that today’s SFPD couldn’t be happier that Kohrs is getting this kind of attention now.
“I think that it’s a great story, that we have an officer with a fan base in the Castro,” Albie Esparza, public information officer for the SFPD, tells me. “It’s always reassuring when we hear about any positive interaction between one of our officers and the community that we serve.”
Apparently, both Officer Kohrs and his bosses see his newfound popularity with gays as a badge of honor.
“I’m flattered, it’s been a hoot,” says Kohrs, flashing his signature aw-shucks smile. “If I can make one person’s day, then I’ve done my job.”