"I don't wanna go to school!" That’s what was going through my head this morning when my alarm went off at 0430 (that’s 4:30 am in civilian talk). Since I work the PM shift, I have a hard time waking up anytime prior to 9:30 am. As it turned out, I had to get up and I’m glad I didn’t just roll over and turn my alarm off. Today I, and about 350 officers from all over San Diego County, participated in the 13th annual “Shop With A Cop” holiday event. It’s unbelievable how big this event is. The day starts at SeaWorld where we were paired up with a child. There are several busloads of kids who attend (300 kids total) and I was paired up with terrific young lady named Jessica. I was pleased to find out that Jessica lives in Chula Vista and is a 2nd grader in one of our local schools. I would’ve had a great time no matter where the child lived, but the fact that she was a local girl gave me something to talk about and helped to break the ice. She seemed like she was genuinely happy to have the opportunity to shop with a police officer and, as we went over her shopping list, I found it extremely refreshing that she picked several items for her parents and little sister. After the initial meet, we have breakfast in a pavilion area at SeaWorld. After breakfast, we all go to see a dolphin show. Okay, so here’s where it gets a little embarrassing. This is my first year doing this event and I haven’t been to SeaWorld in about 7-8 years. They pick out a police officer volunteer from the audience. This officer gets to pet a dolphin and has to hold a rope for the dolphins to jump over. After these dolphins jump over the rope, the officer has to stand on some steps to give a dolphin a hug. The officer loses his balance and falls into the aquarium. In my mind, everything happened in slow motion. The officer falls into the aquarium and, in my mind; I’m picturing him sinking to the bottom due to the weight of his equipment. I actually jumped up and said, “Whoa!” Just as that word left my mouth, it occurred to me that the whole thing was a gag. The next thing I know, this officer is holding onto two dolphins that are towing him across the aquarium. I look back and my buddy (we’ll call him Officer Brian) is laughing, patting me on the shoulder and saying, “It’s okay man, it’s not for real”. As we walked out of the stadium, Brian was still laughing, saying that I looked like I was going to run all the way down to the aquarium to try and save that guy. Brian was obviously familiar with the show. In any case, Jessica was enjoying the show so much that I don’t even think she noticed me losing my mind.
After the dolphin show, we walked out to our cars. The kids get to sit in the front seat and work the lights and sirens while we caravanned to a Target store near the sports arena. One thing that I didn’t mention earlier is that my Chief, Rick Emerson, also attended. Earlier in his career, Chief Emerson was a motor officer and he stills loves to get on a police motorcycle. Today, Chief Emerson rode a motorcycle to the event. As I approached the turn into the Target parking lot, I saw that the officer directing traffic into the parking lot looked a lot like the Chief. I thought, “No, that can’t be the Chief”. Sure enough, it was the Chief, and he gave me a quick salute as I drove by. It’s pretty impressive seeing the top guy directing traffic. As you can imagine, Target was a zoo. Imagine 300 kids and 350 police officers all trying to grab items from the toy section. Each child had $100 to spend in the store and Target waived the sales tax. Many of the kids went over their $100.00 spending limit, so the officers paid the difference out of their own pockets. Here’s the thing; officers deal with a lot of kids in the course of their duties. Some of the time, the kids are not the most well behaved and it’s real easy to lose hope for the future. Meeting kids like Jessica and the other kids in the “Shop With A Cop” program is really comforting and gives me hope for this up and coming generation.
Thanksgiving With LT
On November 21st, I worked an event called “Giving Thanks With LT”. It’s an event that is primarily sponsored by Tomlinson’s Touching Lives Foundation, Inc. The purpose of the event is to provide 1500 turkeys with all the fixings to less fortunate local families, allowing them the opportunity to have a happy thanksgiving. On top of that, LT goes shopping with 21 kids who are seriously ill. The event started at 7:00 am and lasted until about 9:45 am. On the surface, that’s all there was to it, but if you look closer, there was a lot more that went on in the weeks and months prior to November 21st. On my end, everything was pretty easy. Me and about 10 other officers arrived at a local Wal-Mart at approximately 5:30 am. When I rolled into the parking lot, I saw that it was loaded with cars and people. My first impression was that it was the day after Thanksgiving and that everyone was doing their holiday shopping, but then I realized that Thanksgiving wasn’t for another 2 days. All of the people in the parking lot were there to help out with the event. People were unloading turkeys off of pallets, putting together bags full of vegetables and canned goods, and setting up tables for these turkeys to be passed out at. Logistically, this had to have been a difficult event to put together. LT’s foundation had to partner up with other organization to identify needy families and to provide food and a venue to hold the event. I saw that members of Child Protective Services and the Boys and Girls club assisted in identifying needy families and I’m sure that Wal-Mart played a big part in providing the food. I’m sure there were other organizations involved, but I don’t have their information off the top of my head. When you hear of an athlete or celebrity putting on or participating in an event like this, you sometimes have to wonder if the celebrity is only participating to gain publicity. I had the opportunity to meet LT as well as his wife and I found them both to be both engaging and very down to earth. Throughout the event, fans constantly surrounded LT and I never saw a sour expression on his face. He took everything in stride and didn’t turn anyone away. In fact, he even took time out to exchange pleasantries with a guy wearing a Raiders jersey as well as another guy in a Broncos jacket. After the turkeys were all gone, LT did an interview for “The NFL Today”. After the interview, LT signed a bunch of memorabilia for Wal-Mart employees and posed for pictures with a lot of the volunteers for the event. Again, I never got the impression that he didn’t want to be there or that he was put out. My Lieutenant assigned me to give him an escort out of the city and I asked his manager if I could talk to his driver to find out what route they were going to take. I was surprised to find out that LT would be driving himself. It’s not too often that athletes of LT’s caliber are willing to interact with the public and with so many controversial athletes in professional sports today, I’m real glad that he is part of our community.
