CARLSBAD -- A genuinely nice guy. An independently wealthy man. A police officer who does the job because he loves it. An avid martial arts enthusiast. And, a man who likes routines and orders the same breakfast every time he goes to Marie Callender's.

Those are some of the phrases that friends, family, co-workers, and even some of the people he's arrested use to describe incoming City Councilman Keith Blackburn.

"He's just a decent guy in the way he treats people, even if they're crooks," Carlsbad police Capt. Bill Rowland, who has been his partner at several points during Blackburn's career with the Police Department.

Blackburn, 49, has served on Carlsbad's police force since 1987 and was eligible for retirement early next year. His last day on patrol was to be Saturday night. He's stepping down from his job as a police sergeant because he's just been elected to the City Council. On Tuesday evening, he'll be sworn in, replacing Councilwoman Julie Nygaard.

While he says he wanted to be cop as a kid, Blackburn didn't come from a family of police officers.

His grandfather became a wealthy businessman by creating a check-cashing business in the Los Angeles area some 60 years ago, Blackburn said. With that money, his grandfather eventually set up the Blackburn family foundation, a nonprofit group that now provides grants to local organizations.

Blackburn has managed the distribution of the money for the last six years.

"I'm sure he's over the $100,000 mark for (his donations to) the Boys & Girls Clubs," said local businessman Greg Nelson, who is a longtime donor to the club himself and has discussed various projects with Blackburn.

People probably will never know how much the Blackburns have contributed to various community organizations and needy people, Nelson said. They are known for being publicity-shy when it comes to discussing what they give away.

Asked how he would describe Blackburn, Nelson calls him a class act -- "He's an honest guy …. I have never heard a cross word about him," he said.

Blackburn didn't really know his biological father -- his dad died at age 23 of a heart attack, when Blackburn was 3. He said he's not sure what his dad did for a living and describes him as living a wild life as a young man.

The man he considers his "real father" is his stepfather, who married his mom when Blackburn was in elementary school. They moved to Escondido, and his stepfather worked as an parts manager at an auto dealership in Vista.

In typical self-deprecating style, Blackburn said he was a "B's and C's" student at Escondido High and something of a nerd. The school's wrestling coach signed him up as a freshman simply because he needed a team member who weighed 122 pounds, he said.

Blackburn lost every match he was in that year, and didn't attempt any high school sports after that.

But he has since left his weakling days far behind him. He now teaches jujitsu classes to other police officers and is "one of the tougher guys I've ever met," Rowland said.

After graduating in 1976, Blackburn went to college initially with the goal of becoming a dentist. He dropped that idea after he discovered how difficult the course work was going to be, he said.

His first job out of the police academy was with the former Imperial Beach Police Department. A year later, in 1980, he went to work for the county Sheriff's Department.

One of his early calls there involved a suicidal woman. This fall, she came forward and thanked Blackburn for persuading her not to commit suicide two decades ago.

"I'm alive and it's because of you, you and your stupid talking," she said, laughing as she described how Blackburn told her over and over what she might miss out on if she killed herself.

Over the years, the officer who was once described as a nervous "newbie" has grown to adore the job -- "It turned out to be what I was made to do," he said.

Blackburn's daughter, Kristin, likes to tell people about a man who telephoned her family in the weeks leading up to the November election to say he was impressed with her dad and was voting for him -- even though Blackburn had previously arrested him for drunken driving.

Kristin's former roommate, Melanie Brown, said she can understand why people who've been pulled over by Blackburn would think kindly of him. She and Kristin have seen him in action -- he's taken them on police ride-alongs.

"You should see him when he's pulling people over," Brown said last week. "He's not cold. He's a warm person. He'll be smiling and being nice … while he's arresting someone for DUI."

She'll never forget the time he arrested a young, terrified Marine for drunken driving. Blackburn treated him wonderfully -- "He didn't try to make the guy feel any more scared than he already was" -- and he let the Marine call a friend to drive his car home so it wouldn't have to be towed, she said.

Blackburn said it's going to be hard to say goodbye to the job. He's talking about becoming an unpaid volunteer reserve officer after he takes up his spot on the council.