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One word echoed through the hushed Cabrillo College football stadium, repeated again and again by those who knew Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller as they paid tribute Wednesday behind his flag-draped coffin to the young officer slain in an ambush 11 days ago.
Selfless.
Fighting tears and struggling to find their voices, they recalled how he spent the money he’d saved for his dream Jeep on cancer treatments for his beloved border collie Shasta. How he made time for dinner each week with his mother, took her to her doctor’s appointments and invited her to live with his family as her age took its toll.
“Have you ever tried describing something incredibly beautiful to someone who has never seen it?” Gutzwiller’s pregnant widow, Favi, told the assembly. “Some things are too big, too beautiful to describe, and a picture will never do it justice. That’s how it is with Damon.”
In a two-hour memorial with a traditional bagpipe band, country singers, a law enforcement wall of honor and a flyover, friends, family and fellow officers recalled vignettes about the 38-year-old lawman they knew for his infectious smile and boundless enthusiasm.
In the most heartrending moment, Sheriff Jim Hart knelt before Gutzwiller’s 2-year-old son Carter and presented the boy, dressed in a dark suit, with his slain father’s badge. Gov. Gavin Newsom met with Gutzwiller’s family before the ceremony.
Gutzwiller was fatally shot June 6 in Ben Lomond, a community in the redwood-forested mountains above Santa Cruz, as he and other officers investigated a report of a white van filled with weapons and bombs.
Steven Carrillo, a 32-year-old Ben Lomond man and Air Force sergeant inspired by a radical online anti-government movement, has been charged with murdering Gutzwiller and wounding other officers in the Ben Lomond rampage. He also is accused with an alleged accomplice of fatally shooting federal Officer David Patrick Underwood and wounding another officer May 29 in Oakland. Underwood will be remembered at a memorial Friday in Pinole.
The officers’ shootings unfolded as police nationwide face intense criticism following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Sheriff Hart acknowledged the national tension in his remarks Wednesday, while noting that Gutzwiller represented policing at its very best.
“When we put on our uniforms every day, we know the risk,” Hart said. “But we also know that none of us are perfect, but perfection is expected of us. If we follow Damon’s example, the world will see the best of us.”
The officer’s shooting drew an outpouring of support from the community. A vigil outside the sheriff’s office the following day drew a thousand well-wishers, and residents in the Ben Lomond area brought food and water to the officers investigating the crime scene, Hart said.
That support was evident Wednesday morning as scores of residents throughout the community lined the streets from Santa Cruz to the memorial site in Aptos.
Deborah Elston was in tears as she stood silently clutching a large American flag when the police motorcycles, patrol cars and fire engines with flashing red and blue lights motored through Santa Cruz toward the memorial.
“They put their lives on the line every day,” said Elston, 66, of Santa Cruz, who volunteers with the city’s police department. “It’s a way for us to honor them. It takes a very special person to do this job.”
Robin Brune’s voice cracked as she talked about her hand-made sign: “Rest in Peace Sgt. Gutzwiller Together We Mourn.”
“It’s just a reminder that that day, this man died to protect me and our community,” said Brune, 58, of Felton, just south of Ben Lomond.
Three friends from nearby Scotts Valley ordered up a memorial banner online that they held together as the procession rolled by.
“We just want to show our brothers and sisters in blue we love everybody,” one of the friends, Laura Pederson, said.
Officers recalled how Gutzwiller exemplified the law enforcement concept of “community policing,” an effort to forge trust by building ties with residents to collaboratively solve problems.
“Policing to him meant trying to communicate his way out of a problem,” Hart said.
That could at times mean a light-hearted approach. Fellow sheriff’s sergeant and friend Chris Shearer recalled a time when Gutzwiller told a car thief trying to lie his way out of trouble that he was an “LLPOF,” which he later explained meant “liar, liar, pants on fire.”
“That was Damon — straightforward, creative,” Shearer said.
An only child raised by his mother in Aptos, Gutzwiller doted on his family, friends, coworkers and pet. He loved fantasy football, poker, hiking, golf, and favored unsweetened iced tea over beer. He dreamed of having a Jeep, a cabin in the Sierra Nevada mountains, of one day coaching his son’s Little League team and teaching him to play hockey and golf.
His wife recalled that on their first date, he brought over ice cream and suggested they watch 300, a film about the Battle of Thermopylae in ancient Greece’s Persian Wars. A few weeks later, after she’d had a rough shift at her job as a neonatal intensive care nurse, he made food for her.
“I didn’t know anyone could be that kind,” Favi Gutzwiller said.
The last Santa Cruz County deputy sheriff killed on duty was Michael A. Gray, shot by surprise by a transient in January 1983.
“We’re left with the challenge of living up to Damon’s legacy,” Hart said, “and policing this community in a way that would make him proud.”
