The Only ‘CHiPs’ Cast Members Still Alive Today

For six seasons on NBC, from September 15, 1977, to May 1, 1983, two California Highway Patrol officers cruised the Los Angeles freeways on Kawasakis and somehow solved every pileup, purse snatching and runaway truck in under an hour. CHiPs ran 139 episodes, made a poster star out of Erik Estrada’s grin, and gave a generation of kids a reason to hum along every time a motorcycle cop rolled past the family station wagon.

The show’s roll call grew a lot bigger than Ponch and Jon, though. Sergeants, rookies, a mechanic, a future Klingon, an Olympic champion and a world speedway champion all pulled on the tan uniform at some point. More than four decades after the last episode, we checked on the stars who rode with them to find out who is still with us today, starting with the one cast member we have lost.

Is Clarence Gilyard Jr. Still Alive?

Clarence Gilyard Jr. joined CHiPs in its final season as Officer Benjamin Webster, and as ET Online noted, it was his first long-running TV role. It turned out to be a launching pad. Within a few years, he was flying as the radar intercept officer “Sundown” in Top Gun, then playing Theo, the wisecracking computer expert in Hans Gruber’s crew, in Die Hard. Television viewers knew him even better as private investigator Conrad McMasters opposite Andy Griffith on Matlock, and then as Jimmy Trivette, Chuck Norris’s partner for eight seasons on Walker, Texas Ranger.

Gilyard later traded sets for a classroom, teaching stage and screen acting at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, from 2006 on. UNLV announced on November 28, 2022, that he had died at his Las Vegas home at 66, and the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that he had been suffering from a long illness. No cause was ever made public. “Professor Gilyard was a beacon of light and strength for everyone around him,” UNLV film chair Heather Addison said in a statement carried by ET Online and the Associated Press, adding that whenever anyone asked how he was doing, he would answer, “Blessed!”

Every other main CHiPs star we could confirm is still riding, and one of them came to the show straight from a racetrack.

Is Bruce Penhall Still Alive?

Bruce Penhall was not an actor when CHiPs found him. He was the best speedway rider in the world, winning the individual World Championship in 1981 and again in 1982, when he took the title in front of a home crowd at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and retired from international racing the same night. That fall he made his debut as Officer Bruce Nelson in the season six episode “Speedway Fever,” which built its story around that very Coliseum win, and he became Ponch’s partner for the rest of the final season.

Penhall went on to become a world champion a third time in offshore powerboat racing, and he was inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1999. His family suffered a terrible loss in 2012, when his son Connor was killed by a drunk driver. Each year Southern California’s speedway community races the Connor Penhall Memorial Cup in his honor, and Cycle News covered the 2026 edition at Industry Hills Speedway this spring. Born May 10, 1957, Penhall is 69 and still a regular face at speedway meetings in the U.S. and Europe.

Penhall was not the only famous athlete the producers borrowed, either.

Is Caitlyn Jenner Still Alive?

When Erik Estrada walked off the set in 1981 over a contract dispute with NBC and MGM, the show needed a new partner for Jon Baker in a hurry. It turned to the 1976 Olympic decathlon champion, then known as Bruce Jenner, who played Officer Steve McLeish in a short run of episodes during the 1981 to 1982 season until Estrada returned.

Jenner, who came out as transgender and has lived publicly as Caitlyn since 2015, became one of the most recognized faces in reality television through Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and she made a guest appearance on Hulu’s The Kardashians in 2025. Born October 28, 1949, she turned 77 just last month.

Jenner was a guest in the motor pool, but one man kept those bikes running for five seasons.

Is Lou Wagner Still Alive?

Lou Wagner played Harlan Arliss, the mechanic who kept the motorcycles and patrol cars in working order, from 1978 until the show ended in 1983. Movie fans already knew his voice, if not his face. A decade earlier he had spent hours in makeup to play Lucius, the rebellious young chimpanzee, in the original Planet of the Apes, a role he played again in Beneath the Planet of the Apes and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.

Wagner kept working in guest roles for decades, from The Golden Girls to Yes, Dear and Raising Hope, and according to The List, his most recent credits came in 2023. He is also one of the last surviving principal actors from the 1968 Apes film, which our own look at the surviving ‘Planet of the Apes’ cast covered, and in a February 2026 interview with That’s Classic he said he intends to “carry the torch” for the film’s legacy. Reference books disagree on his birth year, listing both August 1940 and August 1948, which places him somewhere between 78 and 86 today.

Over at the Central Division briefing room, two familiar officers stayed on duty almost the whole run.

Is Brodie Greer Still Alive?

Brodie Greer was Officer Barry Baricza, the tall, easygoing patrolman his colleagues called “Bear,” and he appeared in 53 episodes between 1977 and 1982. He had come to the show from Days of Our Lives, and he came back to the uniform one more time for the TNT reunion movie CHiPs ’99 in 1998.

After a few more roles, including a 1983 turn on The Love Boat, Greer stepped back from acting and found a second calling with teenagers. Wikipedia and The List both report that he coaches volleyball and boys’ basketball at middle and high schools in Carmel, California, where he has spent about a decade as a junior varsity volleyball coach and varsity assistant. Born October 26, 1949, Greer is 77.

His partner in the background of so many briefing scenes had a far more dramatic second act.

Is Paul Linke Still Alive?

Paul Linke played Officer Arthur “Artie” Grossman, the station’s resident cutup, and his comedy was so convincing that it nearly cost him work afterward. “My agent dropped me, because he didn’t think I’d be funny anymore,” he recalled to Cryptic Rock in 2017, according to The List. The reason he stopped being funny was heartbreaking. His first wife, Francesca “Chex” Draper, died of breast cancer in 1986, leaving him with three young children.

Linke turned his grief into a one-man play, Time Flies When You’re Alive, which began on a Los Angeles stage, became an HBO special and later a book. He married actress Christine Healy in 1991, and the couple have a daughter. He co-wrote and directed Save It for the Stage: The Life of Reilly with Charles Nelson Reilly, and he has kept performing solo shows ever since, including The Summer I Got Old, which Santa Monica Playhouse posted online in 2025. Born May 6, 1948, Linke is 78.

Not every officer at Central was one of the guys, and one of them married a co-star in secret.

Is Randi Oakes Still Alive?

Randi Oakes grew up in Sumner, Iowa, moved to New York at 17 and became one of the country’s top models before trying acting. She joined CHiPs in 1979 as Officer Bonnie Clark, the sunny blonde officer who could keep up with Ponch and Jon, and she stayed through 1982. Off camera, she married actor Gregory Harrison on December 21, 1980, and the couple kept their wedding out of the press for years.

After guest spots on The Love Boat and Fantasy Island, Oakes left show business when her first child was born in 1985 and never looked back. “She’s glad not to be in the business,” Harrison told the Toronto Star in 1992, a quote both Wikipedia and The List still cite. She did put the uniform back on, in spirit at least, in 2015, when she recorded introductions for MeTV’s CHiPs reruns with other cast members. Born August 19, 1951, Oakes is 75 and still married to Harrison.

A few desks over sat an officer who would one day command a starship’s security team.

Is Michael Dorn Still Alive?

Michael Dorn spent six months studying with acting teacher Charles E. Conrad before he landed the role of Officer Jebediah Turner, whom he played from 1979 to 1982. Five years after CHiPs, he put on a forehead ridge and became Lieutenant Worf on Star Trek: The Next Generation, a part he carried through all seven seasons, four more on Deep Space Nine and a run of feature films. He has played a regular in more Star Trek episodes than any other actor in the franchise.

Dorn made Worf memorable by going against the grain. “I went ‘I’m going to do the opposite,'” he said on Michael Rosenbaum’s Inside of You podcast in 2024, as The List reported, and he returned to the role for the final season of Star Trek: Picard in 2023 only after he was satisfied the part was meaningful. These days he is busy behind a microphone, voicing Battle Beast on Invincible and characters on Teen Titans Go! and X-Men ’97 this year. Born December 9, 1952, Dorn is 73.

Every one of those officers answered to the same steady sergeant.

Is Robert Pine Still Alive?

Robert Pine played Sergeant Joseph Getraer, the patient boss who handed out assignments at morning roll call and occasionally a lecture to Ponch. He was already a veteran of Gunsmoke and The Mod Squad when the show started, and he never really stopped working. His later credits stretch from The Office and Parks and Recreation to Magnum P.I., 9-1-1: Lone Star and the 2022 miniseries Five Days at Memorial.

Younger viewers may know him best as Chris Pine’s father; he and his wife, actress Gwynne Gilford, raised Chris and his sister Katie, both actors. In the fall of 2025 Pine posed with Erik Estrada and Larry Wilcox at a New Jersey fan convention, a ‘CHiPs’ reunion that delighted longtime fans, and he still does not consider himself retired. “This business is survival, and I’ve survived, and I’ve had a wonderful career,” he said on the Party Nerds Pop-Cast in March 2026. Born July 10, 1941, Pine is 85.

Standing next to him in that reunion photo was the man who once said he was fired from the show.

Is Larry Wilcox Still Alive?

Larry Wilcox had already lived a full life before he played Officer Jon Baker. He served as a Marine Corps artilleryman in Vietnam, including during the Tet Offensive, and he got his acting start in 22 episodes of Lassie. On CHiPs he was the calm, by-the-book half of the partnership, and off camera the contrast with his co-star was real. “We’re just two totally different people,” he once said of Estrada. Wilcox left after the fifth season in 1982, and in a 2025 podcast interview he said he believed Estrada had him fired, as we reported last year.

He landed on his feet behind the camera. His company, Wilcox Productions, made The Ray Bradbury Theater for HBO, and he was an executive producer of the 1996 film Flipper. There were hard years too, including a 2010 guilty plea to securities fraud conspiracy that ended in three years of probation. The bad blood with Estrada, though, is long gone. Wilcox said he simply decided to let go of the resentment. “I just became his best friend,” he explained, and he has since described their relationship as “great” and “lots of fun.” Wilcox is 79, born in August 1947.

Which brings us to the man whose smile sold the lunchboxes.

Is Erik Estrada Still Alive?

Erik Estrada was born in East Harlem on March 16, 1949, and he had never ridden a motorcycle before he was cast as Officer Frank “Ponch” Poncherello. He took an eight-week riding course to learn, and in August 1979 a crash during filming broke both of his wrists and fractured several ribs, an injury the writers worked into the show. Two years later he held out over syndication profits, which is how Bruce Jenner briefly ended up in his uniform.

After CHiPs, Estrada became a huge star in Mexico with the telenovela Dos mujeres, un camino, hosted American Adventurer for a decade and showed up everywhere from The Surreal Life to the 2024 series Fallout. His real calling, though, turned out to be the job he only pretended to have. “I’ve always wanted to be a cop since I was seven years old,” he told Yahoo TV. He became a reserve officer in Muncie, Indiana, then spent years with the Bedford County, Virginia, Sheriff’s Office tracking online predators as an Internet Crimes Against Children investigator. “I was a kid who wanted to be a cop, who became an actor who played a cop,” he said. “Now I’m a cop who acts once in a while.”

At 77, Ponch is still signing autographs at fan conventions, including Big Lick Comic Con in Roanoke, Virginia, in February 2026, and still guarding the details of his police work. Asked about it by WTVA 9 News in March 2026, he kept the answer short, as The List reported: “It’s not for them. It’s for me.”