DUI Attorney in Apple Valley

Reviewed by Ron Chini, Esq. · CA State Bar No. 263308 · DUI defense attorney in Irvine, CA since 2009.
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How DUIs are policed in Apple Valley

Apple Valley has never run its own police department. The town has contracted with the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department for police services since before its 1988 incorporation, served out of a station built specifically for the town: the Apple Valley Station, 14931 Dale Evans Parkway — a street named, fittingly, after the town's most famous former resident. In June 2024, the Town Council renewed that policing contract at $18.9 million for fiscal year 2024-25, a 2.68% increase over the prior $18.5 million agreement, and specifically added a radar gun and a fifth dedicated traffic-enforcement officer to the deal.

Freeway and state-highway enforcement is handled separately. CHP's Inland Division — Victorville Area office (CHP #850), 14210 Amargosa Road, Victorville, (760) 241-1186, names Apple Valley directly among the High Desert communities it serves, patrolling roughly 1,700 square miles that include Interstate 15, State Route 18 (which runs directly through Apple Valley toward Lucerne Valley and the mountains beyond), State Route 247, and US 395. The Sheriff's Apple Valley Station also runs periodic DUI/checkpoint operations funded through California Office of Traffic Safety grants — for example, an August 2026 checkpoint — on top of its ordinary patrol work.

• California's Office of Traffic Safety 2023 rankings credited Apple Valley with 29 DUI arrests, ranked 4th of 103 comparably grouped California agencies — down from 44 arrests in 2022 and 49 in 2021 (ots.ca.gov/rankings/apple-valley-2023/).
• The Apple Valley Station's $18.9 million FY 2024-25 Sheriff's contract (a 2.68% increase over the prior year) added a radar gun and a fifth traffic-enforcement officer specifically for the town — a funding increase separate from, and in addition to, any single checkpoint event.

Where an Apple Valley DUI case is heard

A DUI arrest anywhere in Apple Valley — on Highway 18, Bear Valley Road, Central Road, or elsewhere in town — is filed at the Victorville District Courthouse, 14455 Civic Drive, Victorville, CA 92392. Apple Valley is named directly on that courthouse's own Areas Served list, alongside Victorville, Hesperia, Adelanto, Oak Hills, Phelan, Wrightwood, Lucerne Valley, and Barstow. Both misdemeanor and felony DUI filings for Apple Valley are heard at this one building — the Victorville Courthouse's own page describes no split between the two for High Desert cases. The San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office, not any town attorney, prosecutes the case.

Booking and getting a car back after an Apple Valley arrest

Apple Valley's own Sheriff Station, 14931 Dale Evans Parkway, handles the initial arrest and booking, but it isn't a long-term holding facility. From there, most arrestees who aren't cited and released are transported to the High Desert Detention Center in Adelanto, 9438 Commerce Way — the county jail built in 2006 specifically to serve the High Desert, with capacity for more than 2,100 people. If you can't reach someone arrested in Apple Valley, the county's online inmate locator, or a direct call to our office, is the fastest way to confirm where they ended up.

Your vehicle is a separate matter from the arrest itself. A routine tow after an Apple Valley DUI stop — made under Vehicle Code §22651(h) — generally lets you, or someone you authorize, retrieve the car from the tow yard once you handle the release paperwork and towing and storage fees. The mandatory 30-day impound under Vehicle Code §14602.6 is a distinct, more serious outcome that applies only when the driver was also unlicensed, suspended, revoked, or restricted without a required interlock device — not to a DUI arrest by itself. Ask us which situation applies to your stop during your free consultation.

Apple orchards, Appleton, and the town Roy Rogers called home

Apple Valley takes its name from the apple orchards planted during the area's early-1900s founding — the Appleton Land Company promoted the area in the early 1900s, and settler Ursula Poates is often credited with shortening "Appleton" to today's name, building on even earlier history: the first cabin in the valley was built by Silas Cox in 1860, and by 1915 an orchard of roughly 320 acres owned by Los Angeles Examiner publisher Max Ihmsen was winning prizes for its apples and pears. The crop didn't last: high irrigation-water costs, wartime labor shortages, and fungal disease wiped out commercial apple farming by the mid-20th century. The town as it exists today traces instead to 1946, when Long Beach oil-and-gas partners Newton T. Bass and B.J. "Bud" Westlund formed the Apple Valley Ranchos Land Co. to develop the area; Apple Valley incorporated on November 14, 1988, one of only 22 California municipalities to use "town" rather than "city" in its official name. The 2020 Census counted 75,791 residents across 77.08 square miles, and the town's largest employers today are its own school district, a regional hospital, and a Walmart distribution center — not the fruit the town was named for.

Apple Valley's best-known residents arrived decades after the orchards failed: Western entertainers Roy Rogers and Dale Evans lived in town from 1965 until their deaths, and are buried at Sunset Hills Memorial Park, where the on-site Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Sunset Chapel opened February 19, 2007. In 1994, the town renamed its stretch of Highway 18 the "Happy Trails Highway" in their honor — the same honor that put Dale Evans's name on the parkway where the Sheriff's Apple Valley Station now sits. The couple's own Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Museum moved on from the area decades ago — first to nearby Victorville, then to Branson, Missouri in 2003, closing for good in 2009 — but the Apple Valley Inn they once leased, and a Roy Rogers & Dale Evans collection inside the newer Apple Valley Legacy Museum, keep the connection visible around town today.

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Ron Chini, Esq.

DUI Defense Attorney · CA State Bar No. 263308

Ron defends DUI cases across Southern California from his Irvine office, in English and Farsi — and works directly with you, not a call center.

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