Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)
Come on a ride along with a Veteran Homicide Detective as the twists and turns of the job suddenly end his career and nearly his life; discover how something wonderful is born out of the Darkness. Embark on the journey from helping people on their worst days, to bringing life, excitement and smiles on their best days.
Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)
The Last Call: A Mother's Story After Losing Officer Tara O'Sullivan... "We've Got It From Here"
A routine call. An ambush. A family rerouted in a single night. We sit with Kelley O’Sullivan to remember her daughter, Officer Tara O’Sullivan—who she was before the uniform, how she earned her badge, and what it means to carry her legacy when the cameras move on.
Kelley brings us into the rooms that mattered: the Explorer meetings where a mentor lit the spark, the Sacramento State Program that demystified hiring, the academy mats where grit outlasted size, and the field training car where hard feedback became real growth. Then the story narrows to a backyard filled with outbuildings, a barricaded suspect with ghost guns and cameras, and seconds that changed everything. Kelley recounts the call no parent wants, the hospital hallway that felt endless, the moonlit procession, and the complicated logistics of public mourning when a line‑of‑duty death becomes headline news.
What follows isn’t closure—it’s truth. We talk about how grief evolves from shock to the difficult “and,” where sorrow and gratitude coexist. Kelley shares what people get wrong about closure, why memorials matter year after year, and how she turned pain into service by working with Sacramento PD and speaking to new recruits. Along the way, we honor Tara’s discipline, curiosity, and toughness—the student of American Sign Language, the teammate who never dropped the plate, the officer who kept showing up.
If stories of courage, community, and hard-earned hope matter to you, press play. Then share this episode with someone who needs it, leave a review so more people can find it, and tell us what part of Tara’s legacy moved you most.
Gift For You!!! Murders to Music will be releasing "SNAPSHOTS" periodcally to keep you entertained throughout the week! Snapshots will be short, concise bonus episodes containing funny stories, tid bits of brilliance and magical moments!!! Give them a listen and keep up on the tea!
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There is shock and grief tonight in Sacramento, California. A rookie police officer was gunned down. Responding to a domestic violence call. Tara O'Sullivan is the first officer killed in the line of duty in Sacramento in 20 years. Jamie Eupis is there.
SPEAKER_02:We're devastated tonight. Officer Tara Christina O'Sullivan gave her young life while protecting our community.
SPEAKER_01:The nightmare unfolded in seconds.
SPEAKER_02:Multiple shots fired, multiple shots fired.
SPEAKER_01:Sacramento police officer Tar O'Sullivan lay on the ground, hit by gunfire. Officers warmed in, but the suspect, Adele Sembrano Ramos, kept firing, pinning them down. Sacramento police tried to radio this drinking officer. But by then, 44 agonizing minutes had passed. Officer O'Sullivan was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.
SPEAKER_03:My name is Aaron. I'm your host, and thank you guys so much for jumping in on just another episode. So, on tonight's show, we're going to talk about Officer Taro Sullivan, just like the introduction clip said. But tonight, before we get there, I need to give you guys a little bit more backstory. On June 19th, 2019, Tara O'Sullivan was in the field training program with the Sacramento Police Department in Sacramento, California. She was on her third phase, getting ready to test into her fourth phase. What that means is this was a critical moment in her field training program where you are being judged by everything. The trainers have to determine whether you are ready to go out on your own and go to that next phase or not. This is an advanced portion of initial training, an advanced stage of the field training program with the Sacramento Police Department. On the day in question, she was with her coach and she signed on, and it is her car to run. That day, she chose to take a call for service called a civil standby. Now a civil standby is nothing more than I have some belongings at my house. My husband and I are on the outs, and I need you to go with me to keep everybody safe. Let me go in, collect my purse, and I'll leave, and everybody is safe. That's all this was. This is a call for service that police officers across the nation answer thousands of times per day. If I had to guess. I've never done the math, but it's up there. Now, when she was in her field training program as a FTO myself, former FTO, we want to see our recruits perform at the more exciting calls, the robberies, the higher stress calls. We want to see what it's like when they're inoculated to stress. On this day, Tara chose to take this routine call for service. When she did, she had to go outside of her service area, meet with the complainant. The complainant says, Hey, my stuff is at my house in another area, another town, go get it with me, and everything should be fine. They escort the lady to the house to collect the belongings, and when they get there, they determine the house is locked up. Looks like nobody's home. But the lady says, you know, if you guys go through the backyard, you can get in and then we can get my stuff and get out of here. So when the police make entry into the backyard, they find there's a lot of outbuildings. And they have to clear those buildings of people because we don't know if there's any unknown threats there. They have to clear those buildings. And it was during that process that gunfire erupted from inside of the house. High power, high caliber rifle gunfire erupted, and uh Tar O'Sullivan was shot and killed. Her body fell. Police officers had to retreat, exchanged gunfire. Forty-five minutes later, they were able to get in and get the body out the entire time they're engaged in a firefight at some kind of standoff with the suspect. For another four or five hours, the suspect continued to shoot at police and then finally surrendered. At the end of the day, he went through two different trial processes because of loopholes and issues with the system and he was ultimately found guilty and sentenced to death. Tonight's episode, we are gonna talk to Kelly O'Sullivan, Tara O'Sullivan's mother. We're gonna hear the inside scoop. Who was Tara as a child? How did she get involved in law enforcement? What were her goals and aspirations? What were her drives? We're gonna talk about Kelly. What happened before, during, and after the shooting? How did it affect her? How did it change her life? And what light came out as a bright shining light on the other end? How did she turn tragedy into triumph? Ladies and gentlemen, let's welcome Kelly to the show. Kelly, thank you so much for coming on and uh agreeing to chat with me.
SPEAKER_06:It's interesting that you say growing up with her because I was a young mother. She was um my second child, and I was 21 when I had her. So um yeah, growing up together is a good way to put it. Uh she was spicy, she was the middle kid, and so each of my children are they're all two years apart. It just happened that way. And uh she was the feisty, spicy kid. So she was like, Hey, I'm here, I'm ready to party, you need to focus on me all the time. And um, she kept us on our toes for sure. She was she was a good kid. So, like I said, she was spicy. Um on my husband's my ex-husband's side, he's the youngest, and he's very close with his oldest sister. And our kids were similar in ages. Mine, of course, were on the younger side. So his his sister's kids, um, those cousins were kind of the role models for our kids. And the um that sister's youngest son, Patrick, was six months younger than Tara. So we were both pregnant at the same time. Um, and we basically were doing everything together when the kids were little teeny tiny. And so that sister had said, Hey, Tara's like four years old and Pat's almost four, like, we should get the kids to play soccer because her two older kids were in soccer. And we weren't me growing up, wasn't a big athletic family. We weren't big into sports. I was athletic, but it wasn't like we did stuff. I'm all sisters, by the way, so that's a big change too. And um, so we were like, Yeah, that'll be great. We'll get the kids together. And like, she took to soccer like a duck to water. She was the competition of it, she loved. She loved knocking the other kids over, she loved going to get the ball, she would get hurt, and she would kind of put up a little bit of a fuss. And there was a few times when she was little we had to kind of get her walked off the field, and it was more hurt feelings than hurt her body. So it was kind of fun to watch that evolution take place as she became more competitive as she grew up and more athletic and um gifted with her body being able to do things with her body that way in the physical sense. So she was a tough little kid. Um, always had a big attitude, always ready to like ask a ton of questions about something if she didn't trust you or wasn't quite sure, um, very curious. But um, yeah, she's she like I said, she's my spicy kid. So she's the one who the oldest sister, her sister Krista, was the rule follower. And then Tara comes along as like, well, here's how you kind of break the rules so that when my son came along two years later, he was like breaking everything. He was like, She's all do it this way, this way, this way. So she kind of laid the groundwork for him. So um, yeah, she was a fun kid, always made friends wherever she went. Um, she, a funny story. So I was always room mom with the kids growing up through elementary school. So I was like either one or two or three all at the same time. I was their room mom, and it was her first grade year, and they had to do leprechaun traps for St. Patrick's Day. And Tara was upset because those were her people, because she's Irish, and she's like, I'm gonna make my leprechaun a home. So she did the whole diorama thing. It had a TV and a recliner just like dad, and snacks, and didn't want she didn't want anyone stealing his gold. She's like, she was protecting her leprechaun, and her teacher was like, who'd been a teacher forever, was like, never in ever my teaching career has a kid protected the leprechaun and not wanted the gold. So that's just kind of how she was. Leprechauns and animals, dogs, cats, snails. She was always saving animals and protecting animals. So she was a she was a fun, she was a fun kid. She was a really fun kid. Very competitive, very competitive, very intelligent.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and you mentioned you mentioned you have other kids. So tell me about them. What was the family dynamics like? Um, Tara was into sports. Were the other kids into sports? Was this something your family was doing? What was that environment like?
SPEAKER_06:So because of the the sister, Dennis's sister, my ex-husband's sister, being so into sports and her with her family, we kind of rolled into it with them. So, yes, we included um the other two kids in sports as well. So, up through high school, my oldest played soccer. Um, she played like intramural sports in college, so she was still athletic, um, but not like crazy athletic. And then our son played baseball, little league, uh, football, lacrosse. Like he tried everything until the middle of high school, and then he was like, you know, I'm kind of done getting beat up. So he finished with his athletic career by then, and then Tara continued um to the end of high school as well, until she was injured and unable to play competitively to her liking anymore. So she kind of backed off a lot on that. But yeah, every Sunday, every Saturday, we were at tournaments, we were on fields, we were going, going, going. I don't, I don't think we paid our property taxes on time until like, God, for like 15 years, because we're always paying for uniforms and registration fees and taking all these trips and doing all this stuff. So when I finally could pay it on time, I was like, wait, is this real? We're paying property tax on time with no penalties because we can finally afford it. I can't pretty funny.
SPEAKER_03:I can totally relate. My daughter's a gymnast, and she's been in gymnastics for 10 years, and it's the same thing. You know, you pay all these fees, it's super expensive, it's club, it's competitive. I don't know if you know girls at that age, but they can be catty, terrible human beings. And just awful humans. And they all like fight, and there's the bickering, and then you got the moms who want to be gymnasts and they're living vicariously through their kids. Only thing worse than a baseball dad is a gymnastics mom. And it's just a horrible experience. And then my daughter also got hurt. She broke her back. And uh she, you know, six months or so of kind of some downtime there, and she was helping coach or what have you. And then she came back in and didn't want that to be her defining moment. So after I believe she was in her ninth year at that point, she uh, you know, did gymnastics for another year after her back and then decided that you know she wanted to step down from that competitive level for the same reasons. You know, college with a broken back wasn't gonna happen. And so that was cool. And now she does it through high school. You know, my daughter's uh junior right now, and she does it in high school, so it's a lot less competitive, it's a lot more fun, you know, and it's way more fun. Back to the joy of the game versus the nonsense that comes with it, you know, when you're in those competitive type sports. So and I totally get the whole not being able to pay the bills because you got a thousand dollar gym fee. So I totally get that.
SPEAKER_06:There was always something, like, yeah, always something.
SPEAKER_03:Now, did Tara grow up? You mentioned Dennis. Is Dennis Tara's father?
SPEAKER_06:Yes.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, and did Tara grow up with Dennis in the home or no?
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, so Dennis and I were married um 1992 until 2024. So we're recently divorced. Um, yeah, she had so on my side of the family, she's the second cousin out of like almost 30 cousins because I'm the oldest of six sisters. And then on Dennis's side, he's the youngest of four siblings, and so there's like eight or nine cousins on that side. So we're and you know, um Irish Catholic family, so there was also external cousins as well, so second cousins. So there's family around our kids all the time. So yeah, Dennis and I were together for um like 31 years, I think.
SPEAKER_03:Wow, okay. Yeah, excellent, excellent. So then did Tara always want to go into law enforcement or did she have other goals and aspirations and then get switched to law enforcement? How did that come about?
SPEAKER_06:So she went from I want to be a professional soccer player to I want to be a veterinarian. She did the usual, um, the usual girl stuff, right? She was like, I want to do this, I want to raise horses. So anytime she had an inkling into something, we would look into it a little bit more. Um and then in high school, they have the program as the kids are juniors and seniors are like, hey, look into you know, something that you might be interested in as far as a career. And she picked um law enforcement. So Martinez is a small town in um towards San Francisco, California, the middle of California. Um, excuse me, Northern California. Oh my god, I would get so in trouble for that.
SPEAKER_03:Um I'll try to edit that out for you.
SPEAKER_06:So Martinez has about 35 uh thousand people in it. It's relatively small, but it is the county seat for Conchcross County. Um, and she decided she wanted to learn more about the Explorer program with the Martinez Police Department, and they partnered with Pleasant Hill, which is also another neighboring city, also small. Um, and she just came home with the paperwork one day and she's like, Oh, by the way, I'm doing this thing. It was never can I with this kid, it was always I'm going to, whatever it was. And we we basically had to say yes. So um she started participating in their explorer program where she met her um we call her her cop dad. Uh, he was officer Fred Ferrer, turned into Sergeant Fred Ferrer, and he just got her so excited about that career path and made it really fun because right, policing can be fun, it's terrible at the same time, it's super fun. And so she learned a lot about um what the career could be like for her. And so we're just like, oh well, Martinez is small, it'll be cool, like it's not super crazy out here. And she's like, Oh no, Martinez is great, but I'm not working at Martinez, and we're just like, oh God. So no cops in the family on either side, no law enforcement, no first responders. Um, it's like construction, uh, personal training, right? And then her dad is IT, so he started in telephones and moved over to IT. The aunties are like, there's doctors, lawyers, one firefighter um on uh dentist side, but he's an in-law, so it wasn't like in her face all the time. So it was interesting when that came across, and she really took to it because I'm just like, oh, wait, you you want to do this now? And she's like, Yeah, this is great. And so we thought it would be another passing thing. Like once she got to college, she would change her mind, but no, she stuck with it. So it was not until high school that we really knew that that was her path. Um, although I do have a picture of her growing up, and she it was it was when was it? It was like had to have been early 2000s, and the cops threw the best parties, especially at 4th of July in our neighborhoods. And around the corner, there was a block party that we were going to, and one of the officers there gave her signed his business card and gave it to her, and she just thought it was the coolest thing ever, had this picture, and she's like holding it up, and she just has this huge grin. And the guy's kind of a jerk, but he's not kind of a jerk, he really is a jerk. Yeah, we didn't really know that too much at the time, but that was like another little looking back, that was another inkling that, like, oh, you know, she gravitated toward that kind of person, that kind of authority, not the jerk part, but the the officer part. So she thought that was pretty cool.
SPEAKER_03:That is cool. Um, well, that is uh so she really didn't have that inclination until junior in high school, where she wanted to go towards the explorer post. How active so I was an explorer also, and things were different when I was an explorer. Um, I've got I had 13 to 17, I had 4,000 hours of uniform patrol time with the explorer post. And uh I got exposed to things that I probably never should have. Like I'm doing my first death invest death investigation at 13, you know, where I'm touching the body and all that kind of stuff. And hindsight, maybe that contributed to my therapy needs. I don't know, but um how active did she get to get involved in that explorer post?
SPEAKER_06:So active. She was having so much fun. She would um she would do the shoulder tap operation for she'd try and get someone to buy alcohol for her.
SPEAKER_05:Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_06:And they never would, and she would get so mad, and so then she would go out on ride-alongs and come home at like whatever ungodly hour. Um, and she'd be like, Yeah, we had to take this guy to jail, but Fred wouldn't let me take him into the jail because I wasn't 18 and I was really mad, and he made me sit in the car, and or like um they were out doing something, and they had a there was an intoxicated homeless guy that she ends up coming out of the car and talking to, and Fred's yelling at her, Oh, Sullivan, get in the car. And she's like, But he's being super nice. This guy's chatting her up, and she's just having a blind.
SPEAKER_03:That's awesome.
SPEAKER_06:She was really involved, and when it was her time to be like the leadership part of it, they they just they trusted her and she really got those kids in line and she enjoyed her time being an explorer. She wanted to keep doing it. She begrudgingly gave her uniform stuff back.
SPEAKER_03:Did she ever um have any desire? And you said Martinez Police Department, she wasn't interested in, but did she ever have a desire to go back there and kind of give back to the department that gave to her? Was there ever that conversation?
SPEAKER_06:I'm sure she would. There wasn't a conversation, but I'm sure she would have. So for so this is but this is how she would spin it. So for high school soccer, the kids would um, they'd have an alumni game during the Christmas break where former players can come and play against the current um varsity team. And then the JV girls would come up and scrimmage a little bit too in this game. It's a scrimmage, of course. And Tara was mostly excited, one, to come back and show the girls how to play soccer, even though she had only graduated like a year or two later. Um, and the other highlight is once she turned 21, she could drink beers with the coach. So that was the fun thing afterwards, they would go get beers.
SPEAKER_03:That's awesome.
SPEAKER_06:So that's what she kind of wanted to do. She wanted to bring it back in in a way that's still fun and like show them how to do things properly, kind of thing, but still have some fun. So I'm sure that would have been on her list.
SPEAKER_03:That's way cool. So then she gets out of high school, the explorer program. What about college? What did she major in in college? Did she go to college? Was it for criminal justice? Where where how did that transpire?
SPEAKER_06:So she She asked a ton of questions, right, about the career. And so she got a lot of good advice from her friends over at Martinez, and they were like, Don't do criminal justice. You're going to get all that in your academies. Like, do what interests you. As long as you get your degree, you're going to get that paybunk. My kid was all about making sure her future was set financially. She was very financially savvy for the most part. And so she knew she was going to get her degree. She just didn't know what to get it in yet. And they were like telling her, get it in something that is interesting to you, that you want to learn more about. Don't get it in like something that's even parallel to policing. Do something fun with it. And so she started at um our local JC, which is Diablo Valley College, and she lived at home. And she did that for a few years. And in the meantime, she went to school full-time. She worked at least two jobs at the same time, plus whatever side hustles that she had going, and doing um the volunteering with the police department until they kicked her out age-wise. Um, and so she took things like American Sign Language, she took things like ceramics. So she justified her sign language with like, this is gonna help me be a better officer because not very many people will be able to speak that language. So I can come in handy. And I was like, that's great. I'm like, what about ceramics? She's like, I need to do something with my hand. She's like, it's stress relief. And I was like, okay. So um then she decided to transfer to Sac City because she wanted to go to SAC State. Um, and she's doing all this, like she was living at home, but she wants to pay her own way, and so we're not we're not really footing many of her bills, we're paying for her phone, and you know, of course, keeping food on the table until she moves out. He's ready to go outside again. Um and then she gets over to Sacks State or Sac City, excuse me, which is the local um JC over in Sacramento, and she's making connections. There's a couple of guys that had a restaurant next to across from the school. Um, and they're brothers, one's a firefighter and one's a cop. And she's like, if I go to work for them, like they're gonna give me an inn, they're gonna help me. So she did that for a while. Um, and then she decided once she got to Stax Sacks State, she would uh focus on the early childhood development route. Because then she, in her head, she said, if I get married and should I decide to have kids, like I can put my cop career on hold and do like juvenile probation. Like that's gonna help me in that aspect and also help me with parenting and all this other stuff. So plus the way the cousins had lined out by this time, there's like, I think we're only two short of cousins, like there's two yet to be born, so there's cousins everywhere. Tara's always the one in there playing with them and taking care of them and helping with the littles as we're all growing up together, and so she really gravitated towards kids anyway. So that was kind of a good thing for her to go towards. Um, and it was the cheapest route to get her through Sacks State as well. She didn't have to test to get in the program. She could easily, easily finish it within two years. So that kind of like she's always thinking on all these other aspects too, not just laser, necessarily laser focused on the one thing. So that's what ended up happening with school. She graduated with her degree in childhood development.
SPEAKER_03:Sounds like her like school approach was very diversified across many different areas and for backup plans. And that is so cool because so often, myself included, you know, I don't know what you were like, but I had a focus, I had a goal. I mean, you know, and it was laser focus, and sometimes you miss all the stuff in the surroundings because you just put all your eggs into one basket and that basket, you know, fails, and all of a sudden you don't know what you're gonna fall back on. It was really cool that she had so many different things kind of pre-planned out, um, especially at such a young age. At such a young age, that's really cool.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, she really did. She really did. She's like uh the more life experience she could get, the better officer she would be.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:So that was her thing. She didn't pass up opportunities to learn more, do more. She took those opportunities.
SPEAKER_03:How did she end up getting hired with Sacramento PD?
SPEAKER_06:So um at SAC State, they have a program called the Lex program. It's the Law Enforcement Candidates Scholar Program. And they were just getting off the ground. So her contacts originally through SAC PD, she was already starting the process a little bit, like trying to meet officers, talk to recruiters, find out what she needed to do to work in Sacramento because she liked living there. Um, there was always stuff to do. It was exciting to be an officer there. You weren't gonna really have a boring day. So she got into the program, which she told us, Oh, I'm kind of excited I might get in this thing and it'll help me be a cop. And so we're like, okay. Um, and she got in and she's like, Yeah, it's no big deal. And I was like, Okay, well, congratulations. Like, do you need anything from us to help you? And she was like, No, I've got it covered. So we're like, all right. So we didn't know a whole lot about it. Um, but she there were four of them in the first cohort, and she was the only female, and she was the only female going for SAC PD at the time. So what happens is the recruiting side from Sacramento Police Department and SAC Sheriff were involved at the time, and I think um Highway Patrol was as well. And so they come in and they help with the college courses, they get them ready for the physical examinations and the written things that they're gonna do, and they give it's basically coaching to get them ready for their own academies once they decide where they're gonna go or they're accepted to whatever academy. And so she um, her and one other uh partner person were accepted for SAC PD. So within SAC PD, they had um their counselors, basically, I think they were working in recruiting, and so they would get with the kids and like help them with their fitness, help them with their schoolwork, guide them. You know, you need to do this, you need to do this for your background. Like it's time to start scrubbing your social media, it's time to, you know, make sure your nutrition's on point. Like time management's gonna be a big thing for you in Academy. So they it was really like a coaching thing, along with learning how to be an officer, um, and then being female in the officer. So the other part of this program is they wanted it um to also help with the diversity within the hiring of the officers for these departments. So more women, uh, more Latinos, more Asians. They were trying to get everybody, more African Americans, so that um they would have more opportunities to be hired. So the program's really all-inclusive. You don't have to be any particular thing to be in the program, but it's geared towards those underserved reserves of potential officers, like people that would never have ever thought they could because of their ethnicity. They absolutely can. And so that's what this program does. So that's how she came to Sacramento through Sacramento PD, through the Lex program.
SPEAKER_03:And so she gets hired. And do they always offer jobs to people in that program, or is it just the select? You know, I mean, when you get when you get into the program, do you automatically have a job, or is it something you still have to apply for and go through the background process and interviews and all that stuff?
SPEAKER_06:So you still have to go through the normal channels, yes. Okay. But what you do get is you get more information on how to do it. You get practice tests, you get practice um fitness stuff. So um, yeah, and then that's where the recruiting from those agencies come, and they come, they're like, hey, we want these college-educated kids. Like, how do we get our hands on them basically? And how do we turn them into what we need on our department? So, because right, you like in any academy, you learn your basics, and then your agency gives fills in the rest.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely. What a progressive way for SAC PD to be approaching this to find good quality candidates. Um, you know, it's definitely a proactive approach versus a reactive approach once you get somebody, you know, some unknowns uh application and resume. I mean, it's so hard to find people qualified that want to do this job. Um, you know, a lot of them at the scenario get washed out due to background stuff or you know, just stupidity. It could be adult stupidity or kids' stupidity, but stupid stuff and you know, all that's like, no, you can't be a cop if you're doing that. But anyway, prostitution, I guess, is illegal in most states, and you know, we get them like no, you can't do that. So uh, what was her academy experience like once she got in and got hired? And that academy and field training experience, what was that like for her? And I know she was very athletic. Did she set any goal standards there? Tell me about that.
SPEAKER_06:She did. So she was hired, um, and she had a broken wrist at the time. So she graduated SAC State. Next phase was gonna be in the academy. Um, she had a broken wrist, and so she had to put off the academy she should have been in, which was called 18 BR1. Um, but they was they hired her, so she was still getting paid, and so she did office work and random stuff that for pre-hires. We do this for pre-hires. Um sorry, I say we because now I work with the department. So she's uh she's working in HR and she's helping them with other uh background stuff. Uh she's taking paperwork and doing all this other stuff, the office stuff, right? The not fun stuff that nobody wants to do. Well, she didn't mind. She would get her work done and then she would go out to the barn. So Sacramento has a mounted unit, and she would get her work done really efficiently and always with a positive attitude, and then she would go hang out at the barn for a few hours, and she was learning how to um take care of the animals. So we we lived in Martinez, and it can be considered somewhat rural in some spots. So she had access to animals, but we didn't like they weren't in our neighborhood necessarily. She's always loved horses, so this was right up a rally. She's like, I'm gonna work in the mounted unit, and so I'm gonna go learn how to do that while I have this downtime. Um, so she learned how to, you know, maintain a horse, feed the horse, what happens at the barn, what you do on your downtime, what you do on your other stuff. And she started applying that to the other um units that she was interested in, but mostly it was it was having fun at the barn. So when it was her turn to go into the academy, um she went in for 18 BR2, which started in June, June or July um of 2018, and it kicked her butt. She was shocked. She started doing some videos in the beginning. Um, so she back up a second, she did a pre-academy, they called it pre-academy back then, and it was a few weeks of this is what your life is gonna be like, these are the things you're gonna have to learn. Here's your paperwork to get started. And she it gives you a good taste, but not like the full military taste. So she did that, she was happy to go through that, and then when she got in the academy, it it was like they're yelling you know, they're yelling at you for no no reason and toughening you up and doing this thing, and she's like, Oh my god, and she's having doubts, but she's not really sharing them with me. Um, I'm hearing like we're doing this hard physical stuff, right? Because I'm the trainer mom, so she's given me the details on the fitness. And pretty much since her knee injury, her senior year of school, she'd been once she recovered from that, she had been on her fitness journey. Like she was fit, she wasn't gonna get broken again, like this was never gonna happen again. And she knew she was gonna be an officer and wanted to be the best physical specimen she could be. So by the time she got into academy, she had a six-pack, she was tiny, she was ripped and muscular everywhere, and she was all of five three on a good day. So wow, she's a tiny little thing. She's just tiny. Um, but she was right, she had a mouth on her. So even if she's tiny, she's still got a big mouth on her. So in the academy, she's doing all this fitness stuff, she's really excelling. She struggled as a student with reading sometimes. She wasn't fully dyslexic, but sometimes she would transpose some letters, and so reading wasn't her strong suit, and spelling was a struggle. Um, but she overcame that too, and she was getting where she needed to be, um, and making a ton of friends within the academy. Like, right, you you get really tight with these people because you're all suffering and miserable together. And in the gym, you totally are. She um she called me one day and she's like, Mom, mom, I did like a 20-minute plank, and I'm like, bro, you did a 20-minute plank. She's like, Yeah, it was awesome. I was like, Okay, and then a few weeks later it turned into a 26-minute plank plus some change. And I was like, That's crazy. What did you do? And she's like, Oh, I'm just trash talking to everybody the whole time. And I was like, Yeah, that tracks. So then she calls me another time and she's so excited, she's like, Mom, mom, I choked out Laird. And I was like, What? So she choked out her instructor.
SPEAKER_03:That's awesome.
SPEAKER_06:They were do they were doing their stuff. And this guy, the first time I met him, she conned me into doing a workout with them in the summer during pre-academy. Okay, summers in Sacramento are hot, really hot. She's like, Come to pre-academy family day. We're gonna start the day and do a workout. Then you sit in the classroom with us and you get to like see what we get to do in a day. I was like, sure. So I drive up from the East Bay. We start at six in the morning. Out of like, I don't know, maybe 25 people that are in that particular pre-academy, she's telling me, like, everyone is doing this workout. So I'm thinking there's gonna be like 30 or 40 people doing the workout.
SPEAKER_03:Parents, different fitness levels, life is good. I can just blend in.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, no, no, no, no. It was four adults, and the rest were the recruits, and we're doing their workout. And I'm like, I'm gonna kill you, kid. I was so mad. So there's all these family members that are watching the rest of us suffer at three parents and one spouse. And I'm just like, oh, it's a good thing I'm fit because I would be so mad at you right now, and we're just running and doing all this stuff. And I'm I'm able to do it, but I'm like grumpy the whole time because it's not what I expected. So this guy comes out and starts screaming at us, the parents and the spouse, like we're them. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, who the heck are you? Like, hush your mouth, dude. You're not the boss of me. And he's like six, five or whatever, big dude, bald head, military, screaming about burpees. Like, I don't know how to do burpee. I'm like, dude, burpees are my language. So we're doing the burpees, doing all this stuff. And so when she called me to tell me she choked that guy out, I was so happy.
SPEAKER_03:You're like, thank God he had it coming. I would have choked him out if I could have.
SPEAKER_06:It was so funny. So I was like, tell me more, tell me more. She goes, We're just fighting, we're just fighting. And she goes, and I just waited, and then I got right on his back like a monkey and just grabbed him and just choked him as hard as I could. So she had little razor blades for forearms, right? Because there's nothing to her. And uh she choked him. Yeah, she literally her words were, I choke that bitch out.
SPEAKER_03:That's awesome. That's awesome. Did it for you, Mom? I did it for you.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, pretty much. So, and then once she um, once she was an officer, she did um she had a 15-minute plank and got the record for officer planking, and then did a mile and a half in another uh record time for her age group as an officer, right after she did the 15-minute plank. So this kid was like, she was a physical powerhouse. She loved working out.
SPEAKER_03:That's awesome. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:The other thing she did during the cabin, which wasn't really a record, but it was noticed by the corporals, was that um they took a 10-pound plate and did walking lunges around the track, but you had to have it over your head. And anytime the plate went lower than your head, you had to stop and do like four burpees or seven burpees or whatever, ten burpees. And you did it in groups of four. So if any of your people stopped and dropped the plate, you had to stand there and wait for them to do their burpees and then continue on. So however long that took, they had to do it that day. And she never dropped the plate, didn't have to do a burpee the whole entire time. And they were just like, What the heck?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:So yeah, she called me on that one too. She's like, That plate never went down. She goes, I locked in, mom. I was like, You sure did, kid. So that's way cool. So yeah, she did hold the um, she held the plank record for quite a while. Definitely for quite a while.
SPEAKER_03:That's cool. In my experience, the academy is tough, but things really get hard once you get out of that field training program, and now you're somebody else's bitch for four weeks at a time. Uh what was that like for her?
SPEAKER_06:So her first couple of rounds, um, she was ready. She was excited, right? She's she's freshly graduated, everyone's on a high, but then it gets real. So she's doing okay. She's filling out her notebook, um, she's asking a lot of questions and she's enjoying her time. And then she gets to a training officer who's like known for being difficult, especially with female officers. And in my head, I'm like, well, I know why, because you're tiny, you're little, you're female, and he's gonna, you know, right? They're training you to go out and live life out on the street by yourself. So they're not supposed to be nice to you, they don't want to be your friend. So she's calling me a lot concerned. I'm gonna get fired, I'm gonna get fired. I know I'm gonna get fired today. Like, he's always yelling at me, I can never do anything right. And so we we keep talking her down off the ledge, me and her dad, we talk her down off the ledge, and she finishes her time with him and she calls us and she's like, You guys, I can't even write now. And we're like, What? Did you get fired? She's like, No, it's the last roll call, and he calls me to the front and he gives me a number one and says, I'm his best trainee and his favorite trainee that he's ever had. And I was like, Wow, see, that's cool, he totally changed his mind. And later he wrote us up um a synopsis of their time together and gave it to us, um, which was really sweet because I didn't have any background on this guy, I didn't know what happened in their time together, except she was constantly frustrated by him and thinking she was gonna get fired. But it turned out every correction he made for her, she would fix it right away. And so then they could move on to the next thing. And so um he documented quite a bit that he did and shared it with us, which was really sweet. He goes, I've never had a trainee do what she did. He goes, and I've been a you know FTO for a long time, and I'm known for being a hard ass. He goes, By the end of it, she's singing in the car with us. She's like, he's like, I've never had a trainee not afraid of me. And by the end of it, she's not afraid of me.
SPEAKER_03:That's funny.
SPEAKER_06:Wow.
SPEAKER_03:That's so cool. So we'll get into June 19th, but before we do, are there any areas of this day or this conversation that you are either really comfortable with or not comfortable speaking about?
SPEAKER_06:I'm I think I'm pretty comfortable having gone through two trials for the sentencing, I'm pretty comfortable with most of it. Um, pretty much all of it. Like we didn't watch any of the videos where you could see her or hear her. Um we only watch videos where it was like across the street or she wasn't involved directly during the court process.
SPEAKER_03:Well, as we get into this, if there's ever if I ask a question or we go to an uncharted territory that you're not comfortable with, let me know. You're in control of this and we'll divert, go a different direction. Is that cool?
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, great.
SPEAKER_03:All right. So tell me about. About June 19th, 2019. From your whole story. That day I went on played and then the aftermath.
SPEAKER_06:Okay. Um, it was a Wednesday. It was warm in the East Bay, so we knew Sacramento was gonna be pretty toasty. I had talked to Tara the day before, and her dad had spent the weekend with her. It was Father's Day weekend, and we had um a family cabin, and so they had spent the whole weekend goofing off and doing their silly stuff that they like to do. So um, and I had seen her the week prior to that. I had visited her up in Sacramento. So I had spoken to her the day before, and it wasn't unusual for me to um not hear from her for a day or two in between. We spoke like every two to three days. So um Wednesday I was getting home from work. Um, we had two houses in Martinez at that time where uh I worked out of one and then we lived in another out in the Alhambra Valley. So it was just me and her dad at that point and her dog that she gifted us, which is a whole other story.
SPEAKER_03:Is it the dog I met a minute ago?
SPEAKER_06:No, no, this was another dog that she decided dad needed because dad never gets anything he wants anyway. So um, no, she still had her dog at that point, and um she was working a lot, and so we knew she was nervous. I had spoken to her the day before because they her FTO at that time was saying, You're ready to test for phase four. And that's a grueling test. And she was like, I'm not ready, I'm not ready. So she still had a lot of doubt about her abilities. Um, but I was like, Well, if he knows you're ready, don't you think you're kind of ready? And he knew you were coming. Like, this is so she had some stress about that. So when Wednesday came, I got home from work, I got off a little early. Um, as a trainer, I worked evenings, and so I was able to start dinner a little early. So by seven o'clock, I'm in my kitchen in the Alhambra Hills, which is 20 minutes away from the original Martinez house, and my phone rings, and it's Tara's boyfriend, and I was like, Oh, he doesn't usually call us. So I answer the phone and I'm preparing salmon, and my hands are covered in raw fish. And Tara's dad is on the couch in front of me, and so I hit speaker and I'm like, hey Adam, what's up? And he's like, Hey, Tara's been in an accident, Tara's been hurt, and you need to get to UC Davis Medical Center right away. And so I look at her dad and I was like, Oh, well, like, what do you mean by hurt? And he's like, That's all I know, you guys just need to get out here. And we're like, Okay. So we get off the phone with him, I wash my hands and put the fish in the fridge, and we're talking a little bit, and and I was like, Well, it can't be serious because no one came for us. And he's like, Yeah. So we call um our oldest daughter who was living, she was renting the house in Martinez from us, excuse me, and we're like, Hey, can you we're gonna drop the dog at your house? Something's up with your sister, we're gonna go up and see what's going on. Adam just called us, but we don't think it's very serious because you know, no one else has called us. So we load up the dog, take that dog to the house, and my daughter and her um fiance walk out of the house with their roommate, and they're like, he's gonna watch the dogs, we're gonna go too. And we're like, okay. So we load everyone in the car. It's about an hour and 15-minute drive up to Sacramento, and it's now after seven o'clock. So traffic go either way. You never know what traffic's gonna be like going from one to the other. But we're able to get up there pretty quickly. Um, and the kids are in the backseat, kind of scrolling on their phones, trying to see what if anything's coming up on the news, and they can't really find anything. They do see like a car accident, but it's not, it doesn't seem to be related, so they're not sure. And no one else is reaching out to us at this point. We've got no information. Um, and we were about halfway there at this town called Davis. And so in my head, I hear UC Davis Medical Center. So I'm always like, oh, we'll stop in Davis, it's only right here. It's like, no, we have to go another 20 minutes, it's still further up the road. Well, Davis had just lost six months prior. Their officer, um, officer Natalie Corona had been killed in the line of duty in January 10th, yesterday. And Tara had called me that night and we talked about it. And we fought over us attending the funeral, like all kinds of stuff. Like there was it was a battle with her about that. So we're going through Davis and I'm remembering Natalie, and we're going under this overpass, and there was still signage from Natalie's passing, and that's like in my head, it registers. And in my heart, I knew Tara was gone, but in my head, I'm like, no, this can't be happening again. It's too soon. Like, there's no way you're doing two females killed in the line of duty, so close to go, it's just it's unfathomable. So we get there to the hospital, and we're like, we're not familiar with Sacramento hardly at all. We don't know where to put the car, no one's meeting us at the hospital. Like, it's kind of chaotic. And we're at the side of the hospital where there's no action because again, we don't know where to go. Um so we kind of dump the car. My daughter's fiance takes the car, he's like, I'll handle it. And we go into the building and we're like, hey, we're Tara's, we're we're Tara's family. We've been called to come here. What's going on? And this janitor is like, Oh, I don't know, like, go that way any points. And so we start going down this hall, and I'm like walking, trying to be a normal person. And my daughter starts running down the hallway, and it's like straight out of the movie. It accordions down and gets super long, and we see a bunch of cops at the end of the hallway. And I'm like, oh, okay. So then we all kind of pick up the pace and start running. And I go by there's a bunch of doors, right? Because it's a hallway, and I see an open door, and there's like boxes of donuts on this table in this room that I notice, and I'm like, oh, cops will love that. Like Tara would love that. I'm wondering if she's had a freaking donut by now. And we get to the end of the hall, and we're like, hey, we're we're Tara's family, and they come to meet us. Now, I don't remember who meets us, but I know from the court case who does, and it's um the current chief of police now. She wasn't chief back then, she was a deputy chief. Um, Kathy, uh Kathy, she's Kathy to me right now, meets us and says, Go into this room. And another lieutenant comes in, um, or maybe she was captain at the time, comes in and says, Follow us. We're gonna take you over here and we'll tell you what's what's going on. And so we go into this little round room, and she they're like, have a seat. And um the officer that was paired with us, her name is Wendy Brown, sits in front of us and tells us. My recollection is she says, Well, Tara didn't make it, but she used the like the formal wording that officers use in these situations, which is what my husband, then husband heard and my daughter heard. So I lose it, like everything goes completely blank, and apparently I'm screaming. I didn't know I was screaming. My husband's in front of me and hanging on to me. I'm like grabbing onto him, and then my daughter gets with her fiance at the time, and we're all kind of just like mushed in this middle. And I look up and I see Tara's boyfriend kind of across from us, and he's like upset, physically, physically upset. And I'm looking at him like, wow. And so then we get the news, and I'm like, oh my gosh. So we kind of lose it for forever, it seems like, right? You're in this weird twilight zone of time, and we kind of come to and we're like, okay, well, there's nothing that we can do, right? And they're like, no, and we're like, okay, well, we have family to notify, like, what's next? And we go into go mode, and everyone is just like, okay, the cops don't really know how to handle us, but they're doing the best they can. And then Captain Brown is like at my side the whole entire time. She does not leave my side the whole entire time. We start making the phone calls. The chaplains show up, hospital staff is trying to be helpful. Like, but you can't help us because we're we're a helper family. We we're the ones that go, we'll bring the lasagna, we'll take your kids, we do all this stuff, like, right? We're the soccer parents, we do everything. And so we're thinking, gotta get the family here, like we gotta start taking care of people because we can't take care of her and we don't need taking care of, God forbid.
SPEAKER_03:God forbid, no.
SPEAKER_06:Um, yeah, so yeah. So then we got the news, and then one thing after another after another, family starts coming in, um, trying to notify as many people within our tight family as we could, within the immediate family, that we could um, yeah, it was it was like weirdly controlled chaos. And so uh Wendy, who's being amazing, like I don't know how she did it to this day. I still and she doesn't know how she did it, except she's very stoic in the first place. She was the she was the right person to do it, and she somehow ended up doing it. It was a miracle that it was her. Walks us through. We talk to the doctors, they explain to the best of their current knowledge at the time, like there's nothing they could do, even if they were in the field with her, there was nothing they could do. And so we're like, okay, thank you very much for doing what you could. Then they came in and said, Do you want to talk to her team that was with her? And we're like, Yeah, we totally do, because somehow we knew it wasn't their fault. Like, we knew one person, like when they started telling us what happened, we're like, Okay, this is one guy did it. And then I don't know if you allow swearing on your podcast. Yeah, totally.
SPEAKER_03:Okay. U B U, I it doesn't matter to me.
SPEAKER_06:His name, he doesn't get a name, his name is Fuckface in our house, FF for short. So we knew it was it was on this squarely on fuckface. So we meet the guys in the hallway, and they just look like they're gonna crumble. They're of course, like their partner's gone, they're devastated, they're in street clothes, and they're waiting. Apparently, I found out later. Um, Tara's training officer was thinking we were gonna hit him. He thought Dennis was gonna hit him, and we're like, Why? Like that doesn't even occur to us. We're hugging them, we're explaining, like, we understand it's not your fault. We're we're for sure you guys did the best you could. Um, and so then they go their way, we go back into ours. Family rolls in and out, and then they say, Do you want to see her? And I'm like, Uh yeah, I want to see my kid. So um they take us down the hallway, and the hallway thing in the movies, it's totally real. We start walking down the hallway and it just gets so long, and I'm like, God, this hallway never ends. And I'll walk through it now and be like, it was like 10 feet, it's so crazy, it's not that far at all. So we go and we sit in the room, and um we've been instructed we can't touch her because she's evidence, and she's just laying on this table with the sheet up to her collarbones, and she looks perfect, she's so beautiful, and it's just like she's just sleeping, like everything is in place. All almost her whole entire life, Tara had had super long hair, and during the academy, she kept it long because she could control it, and then she finally got quote unquote permission to cut it, and she hacked it. It was all the way shaved in the back, long in the front, had this great wisp thing going on. She just it looked amazing on her, and so her hair was perfect. I couldn't believe it. I was like, she's this is like this can't be real. This cannot be real right now. Um, my daughter was with us. She noticed uh there was some blood on her because she came in from another angle and I didn't see it, I couldn't see it, but I couldn't like couldn't touch her, move anything around, right? Because you can't touch her. So we stayed for quite a while. Um in the interim, my son was in Portland, and so we had gotten a hold of him and he was on his way with his partner at the time. So then I'm got that worrying in my in the back of my head, like they're coming down here, they don't have an escort. Like, I didn't know we could ask for an escort at any time. Like, we're not cop family, we don't know these things. So that's running. I'm like waiting for them to get there, and then um my husband goes, We we should leave now, like we've gotta let them do their job. They need to do their job. We can't sit here with her all night. And I'm like, Oh, we can't? He's like, No, we can't. So I'm like, Okay. So we go back into that stupid little room, um, talk to the coroner, like, and at that point, my brain kind of broke. And the coroner's this really nice lady, she's asking us these questions, the basic information, like, what's her birthday? How do you spell her middle name? And in my head, I'm giving the information, but nothing's coming out of my mouth. It was the craziest thing. And so my husband's looking at me like, Oh, what do you, you know, what aren't you gonna answer? And I'm like, I am answering. He's like, but you're not. I'm like, oh, I'm like, okay. So then I feel stupid, but it's part of the thing. So all that happens, the chaplains are trying to be nice. I'm like, get the hef away from me. I don't even want a chaplain near me. Um, everyone's kind of walking on eggshells, of course, because you're with the family. And then it comes to the point where they need to transport her over to the coroner's office. And by this time, it's like, I don't know, it's gotta be close to 11, maybe close to midnight. I'm time was weird. I don't know. It like just stopped moving. Um, and then Wendy, at any point when anyone would ask us anything, I would kind of run it by Wendy because I don't know protocol. I didn't know. It's like, but the things I knew for sure, yes, I wanted to see her. Yes, we want to talk to her team. So then she said, Well, they they're gonna do a procession. Do you want to walk with her in the procession? And I was like, or do you even want a procession? And I was like, I don't know. Do we want a procession? Like in my head, I'm thinking marching bands, procession, like not computing, and I'm literally going, Where are you gonna fit all these people? So then she goes, she just grabs, just grabs my hand and she's like, I think it would be beautiful. And I'm like, Okay, like this woman could tell me to swim to China, and I would swim to China at this point. So we go back down the hall, collect her. She's now in a casket, there is a flag on it, and the walls are just lined with every available person in that whole hospital. And so then we come outside to the ambulance bay, and there's tons more people, plainclothes, officers, and I'm starting to recognize some of these people as her academy mates, and I'm just like, and then, and I'm I've been crying on and off the whole time. I still tell myself as we come out, I need to like record this for some reason. I don't know. So I grab my phone, I'm holding it in front of me, and everyone's like crying, and they're saluting, or their hands are on their hearts if they don't have a uniform. And I'm like, wow, this is so surreal. And the honor guard is there, and it's just like it's very formal. And I'm like, wow, like you, you people like don't even know her, and you're here, like, oh my gosh. So they load her as they're getting ready to load her, they stop and they do the thing, and then a car horn goes off three times, and I literally start cracking up. I'm like, that's her, of course it's her. So I felt a little bit better for like a half a second, and then we load her up, and by we, I mean them. They put us in Wendy's car, and then we do the procession over to the coroner's office, and I'm noticing the the media is there. And at some point in the night, the um the other deputy chief had asked Dennis, the media wants to talk to you, the media wants information. Do we have your permission? Because now you've been notified to let them know that Tara didn't make it. And he was like, Yeah, I guess. Like, because again, we don't know how any of this works. So they start doing their press conferences, so then the press is like, Great, so they stay out and hang out where they know we're gonna be. And I'm literally just wanting to scream at them as we go past like a few people, but I don't. And as we're driving, the corner's office is not that far away, and there's a really bright moon, and a helicopter is over us, and I'm like, wow, I'm like, well, that's nice. I'm like, why is there a helicopter? Like, these are things I don't know. Well, it turns out the helicopter was uh newer to SAC PD, and a group of second graders had just named it in honor of Natalie. They had named the helicopter Halo, and so we had Natalie's helicopter following us, which I found out later, which I thought was really sweet. Um, so yeah, we get to the coroner's office, uh, they do the next part of the procession. It's all very formal, and I'm literally like, okay, well, like in my head, I know I can't go with her, but I kind of want to go in there with her. And then they said to me, she'll she's she hasn't been alone and she won't be alone. And I literally like, that's when I kind of lost it again because I was like, Oh, my kid's alone. So then we drop her, quote unquote drop her, and we're like, we're at the mercy of SAC PD. We're like, what do we do now? And they're like, Oh, well, like, we'll put you in a hotel and we'll keep you posted. Because by this time, fuckface is still barricaded in the house and not moving, and they're still trying to get him out. And they said, if once you know, if anything changes, we'll let you know. So Wendy has my cell phone, another DC has Dennis's cell phone, and they tuck us in to the embassy suites on the riverfront off Capitol, which the road leads directly to the California State Capitol, it's fancy. Um, and they kind of tuck us in there, and we're we're exhausted. It's like 1:30 in the morning, and I'm still worrying about my son, but I'm checking kind of on him. He seems to be okay, they're still making their way. And we try and go to bed, and so it's me, Tara's dad, uh, my daughter and her fiance at the time are in another room, and then I don't know if any family members stayed with us that night, but if they didn't, then they said they'll be back in the morning. So I finally fall asleep, it's like two something, and our phones start ringing. And my my phone is Wendy, and she's like, We got him. And I was like, Is he dead? And she was like, No, and I was like, Okay. And then Dennis, I hear him talking to his person, so then we go back to sleep. Um, kind of if you can call it, must have fallen asleep because as a personal trainer, I am up by four o'clock in the morning doing my thing to get ready for my 5 30 and six o'clock clients. So my body automatically wakes up a couple hours later, and then the whole thing seems like it's not even real. And then I realize. Where I'm at, I'm like, oh, okay, it's real. And so then we're just waiting, like, I'm waiting for my son to show up. So I go downstairs to the lobby, and I'm like, should I go to the gym? I need to eat something, but I'm not hungry. I need to drink my stuff for the day. I at least need to do that. And then uh a little bit after six o'clock, my son walks through the door with his girlfriend, a partner, and their dog, and I just lose it again. I'm so glad that he's just there and I can just grab him. And I'm looking at the woman who do who's doing the check-in, and I didn't know the dog policy, and I was like, and this dog is a husky Malamute retriever mix with fur everywhere. He's giant, super friendly. And I'm like, I have a dog. That's all I could get out of my mouth is what about the dog? And she's like, that is the best-looking service dog I have ever seen in my life. And I was like, thank you. So we got the kids upstairs. And then uh after that, it's kind of just like it's a mishmash of people coming in and out, the department with us the whole entire time. Like they made sure that we were always almost always had someone with us. Um, they were doing the best they could, like, and then getting ready for the funerals and the candlelight visuals and dealing with the media, and um like, and then there's the O'Sullivan family who's doing the best they can to take care of everyone else because we're so silly. And uh yeah, it was it was a crazy, crazy 19th and 20th. It was nuts. And then 10 days later, we're back at home. We had the funeral on the 27th, and uh MSC Suites took care of us the whole time. Rayleigh's our local supermarket around here, took care of all of us at the same time. The department did the best they could, other agencies stepped up so that SAC PD could take care of us. It was not knowing what all that really entailed, but knowing now it's pretty incredible. It's pretty incredible.
SPEAKER_03:So what do you know about the incident as it unfolded?
SPEAKER_06:I know at the time I didn't know much. I knew it was a domestic violence call. I now know that due to the court stuff, um the girlfriend at the time called, she'd had enough, and they were her two properties, not his. And uh she gave as much information as she was willing to give at the time, which wasn't enough. And he uh fuckface had hidden guns around the two properties. It was basically two houses, and the the fence in the middle had been taken down. Um they used to be two separate properties. So he had access to two separate houses, um, a couple of outbuildings. He'd hidden ghost guns, basically, that he had manufactured around the property. He had told her that he would be shooting, that people would be dying that day. He he stayed in the house, he barricaded himself into the house, knowing exactly he like he basically funneled those officers right to where he could ambush them. And he had cameras on them the whole time he he knew exactly what he was doing. And the kicker is he his own security cameras documented every single thing he did.
SPEAKER_03:She knew all of this.
SPEAKER_06:The girlfriend knew she knew he had weapons, she did not know he was stashing the guns around the house, she did not know the extent of the barricades. She um I'm pretty sure I know, I'm barely quite certain she knew that he was manufacturing weapons because I believe um her part in it she knew. She knew she had to have known. She had to have known. So, but what she told our dispatch, um it that there was more than what she told dispatch. There was more because when Tara and her team had gotten there, they had found several of the guns that she had admitted to, thinking, you know, okay, well, we found these. Great, we found them. There's right, this should be clean. We should just need to know where he's at. We can get her in the house, she can get her stuff, and she can leave. And then he just he just, like I said, he funneled them to the back of the area, the back of the yard, and just started firing.
SPEAKER_03:All right. So, um so the incident unfolded. Uh, what about her direct partner who was with her that day, the coach? Um, have you spoken to him? What's your relationship like with him?
SPEAKER_06:So, um, Chip, um C-H-I-P-P, she loved to call him Potato Chip. He uh we're friends. He he also has a daughter and a son. Um it really, of course, rocked him to his absolute core. And so upon first meeting him that night and then subsequently getting to know him and his family, um, the they're just wonderful people. And I love Dan. He's he's amazing, and I'm really proud of his kids and proud of how far he's been able to come since the incident. When we're in court and we're having to do victim impact statements, um up until that point, you don't really know the true depth of what someone is going through. And even those impact statements are not going to cover everything, right? And so when we're in court having to give those impact statements and listen to what each other's life has been like since this incident, you realize that there's it's just so profound and can really right, as you know, just knock you sideways. And some people can't recover from that, but um, thank goodness he's he's been able to recover from that.
SPEAKER_03:Good. I want to ask you about mother's intuition. You mentioned that when you were on your way, you saw the flyers and the banners from the previous line of duty death. In your mother's intuition, in your heart, you knew that she was gone. Tell me about that moment, that realization, and what that's all about, and explain that to me because I don't have mother's intuition.
SPEAKER_06:I kind of kick myself for not having it like some mothers do, they know the instant that their child passes. Um, Tara's time of death was it was before I got that phone call, and I didn't have a clue. So when it hit me, um, I didn't recognize it. I shoved it away pretty quickly because I didn't want to believe it. But then looking back on it, I was like, oh, I did know. I knew at that exact moment. So it was it's a weird thing. Um, due to my upbringing, I'm really good at disassociation. And I was able to kind of do that and push that away and be like back, go back to my head, like, nope, like we're gonna get there. It's not a big deal. The way we were notified, it's not a big deal. Like, you know, maybe she's like, you know, another broken wrist or she needs another MCL repair. Like it'll be something like that. So never, never imagining it would be what it was.
SPEAKER_03:You know, in 2016, I responded to a uh active shooter at a high school, and I was one of the first officers there. And when I arrived, there were two teams. I arrived on the front of the building, and the team was arriving on the back of the building that ultimately were making entry at the time that I was on the front. When I'm at the front, there's a thousand plus kids running across the field at me. Directly across the street from this high school is a Mormon church. We didn't know where the shooter was, but we knew that he had shot people inside the building. So I received a thousand kids and I bring them on the back side of the Mormon church to use the Mormon church as hardcover in case we take gunfire. But not knowing who those kids are, there's a process. And that process is they're all suspects until they're proven not to be suspects. So everybody is treated. Hands are in the air, hands on the head, nobody move everything. We have to search them multiple times. Well, during this process, I bring more resources in. And during this process, I search these kids, and I'm overseening this entire scene. I'm acting. And a mom comes running into the scene and she's like, hey, where's my kid? Where's my kid? And I said, I don't know where your kid is. But hang out. There's obviously there's a lot of them coming out of the school, hang out over there and wait. A few minutes later, we're still going through this process where's my kid? She's screaming, she's pestering, and I am direct with her. I'm like, look, I don't know where he is. Go stand over there and wait. And about this time we find a gun on a second kid in the crowd. So now we don't know if it's a suspect, so now everybody's all asked up again. Ultimately, end of that. Um, there was one victim killed in that, and the shooter, the victim was her son. And she knew instantly that he was gone. Um, it's crazy. It's crazy. You know, and part of me is like, well, me being an asshole, you know, not giving her the time, but I mean I had a lot of shit going on. But uh you can't do that, but at the end of the day, she knew. And then I had to go give her the death notification. And uh man, talk about mother's instinct. I just I don't get it. It's crazy. And there's been a couple things like that, but man, that's crazy.
SPEAKER_06:I've met other mothers too that have gone through this that and we talk about that. Some some of the mothers knew and some had no idea.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. What um people don't people often talk about closure in these things, you know? And having been around homicide and death a lot and dealing with the families, I have never I never want to tell them, hey, we're gonna get closure once we once it closes, right? Because we know that you're not gonna get closure. Um but how is your grief, I know you don't have closure, but how has your grief changed since this has all happened over time and we're talking six years now? Um, seven. It's seven, yeah. I don't ever expect the uh closure to occur, but how has your grief in that processing changed?
SPEAKER_06:I think well, the first year, right, is it's everything is just shock. And then the second year, it's worse because then you realize they're not coming back. So all those first and those anniversaries hit harder because it's more real. And then by the third year, you're learning that there's an and, I guess, is the best way that I've been able to equate it. So you can be in shock and disbelief and know they're not coming back, and kind of okay with it. Like it's starting to make a little more sense and be less chaotic. So by now, like the waves don't come as often, but they're still big. Um and there's a lot more and so I'm learning how to see the memory come up. I have one of those revolving picture frames that a lot of people have, and I and I won't get any new pictures of Tara unless her friends send them to me. So those are like that's like Christmas every time I get one of those, and then I add it. But it's it's going back on that memory and being sad and happy for it. So and I'm now learning about the and and it's incorporating it, incorporating it more, and it just now I'm trying to, I wouldn't say I'm trying to move forward because there's it's kind of like a lateral move. I don't think it's like a true forward. So um I spend more time trying to do what I can for the people that are left behind. So her academy mates, her teammates, my family, her siblings. Um and I'm doing that with less guilt as well, I think. More more like I I more of or less of the I have to help, I have to help them, I have to fix them, I have to show them that this is survivable, and more like just letting it be its thing. Like I can I can show you that this is survivable, but you have to make that decision if it is or not for you. But for me, it's sort it's survivable. It's not it's not a fun place to be. It's a terrible way to keep surviving, but but I I can survive this.
SPEAKER_03:Where do you find the strength on days when things seem impossible?
SPEAKER_06:My kids, my other kids. I had a mom say to me, When this something like this happens, and I'm guilty of this too, not having experienced it firsthand yet, where they say things that are just like outlandish. And this mom was like, She has um, she had children of her own, and she said, I would I would slit my wrist if this ever happened to me. How do you do this? And I looked at her instead of just in the face and was like, You have other children, you would not do that. Like, if this was your only child, maybe, but you don't, you know, you wouldn't do that. So I just I think you know, my kids, my little nieces and nephews, my sisters, my parents, um, I I couldn't do that to them. So it's it's that I lean on that a lot. I lean on that a lot.
SPEAKER_03:Grieving mothers, I mean line of la line of duty death is one thing, but I know there's a lot of misconception and misunderstanding, just like the comment that lady made. What is something that people often misunderstand about either line of duty death or a grieving mother in your position?
SPEAKER_06:I think line of duty is interesting because it's so public and it comes up over and over and over again. So a lot of people have asked me, like, well, you can choose not to participate in memorial events every year. You can choose, like, which of course I can choose not to, but on the other hand, line of duty and deaths like this are like no other, and the fact that for as long as people know who these people were, have had physical like interaction with them, or the event touches them in some way, like there will always be something to do on that end of watch day, on their birthday, like those those anniversaries. Most people, you know, if it's a normal continuity death, letting you know it's aged or someone that is is expected, obviously, you're you're not gonna do this. But this was this was international news, especially having both girls back to back like that. So it's bigger, these deaths are bigger than just the normal death. Death sucks no matter which way you do it. But this is this is a little bit extra. So a lot of my people are now starting to understand that yeah, I I choose to participate in these memorial events every single year. I choose to on her her end of watch to do stuff with the department, to do stuff with people. I choose because it's important to honor her for what happened to her and what she represented and what she did. And then the mom thing just right, that adds a little extra pepper to it because she's she was part of me. She was my kid and she was my little fitness mini me, and she's my just you know, so that makes it a little extra hard too. But any mother losing their child is terrible. There's there's no way around that.
SPEAKER_03:Earlier you mentioned that you have some involvement with uh SAC PD. What is your involvement now with them? And does it have anything to do with Tara's story?
SPEAKER_06:It does the original involvement. So her the next academy class after hers graduated the very next day after her incident, which was crazy. And then the next class was starting up a few weeks after that, and so they have a victimology unit within their academy studies, and one of her instructors who I was who I had met and knew um had asked us to speak to the recruits about our story, and so we've we did that, and so they have two academies a year, and since then I've been doing that. I volunteer there, and so then I also we would come and like bring donuts on special days and kind of just hang around and try and be a positive influence um in the department when we could. And then I signed up to uh be a volunteer with them because I had uh I still wanted to keep that connection going, but I kind of wanted to do it on my own terms, which they were completely okay with. So I would like I would go to the barn and spend the day at the barn just like cleaning it. Like I didn't care as long as I got to do something that was within the department, and then uh a job came up, and they were like, why don't you apply for the job? And I had recently moved to Sacramento, I had split with Tara's dad and um wanted to be better, but with a better airport and closer to my parents, they live in the city not that far away, and uh it worked out, and so then yeah, I got that job, and so now I'm a community service representative for the Sacramento Police Department, so I'm that liaison with the community and the department, which is it's a good way to continue Tara's legacy. So it's a little bit of a struggle when people find out who I am in the middle of a meeting, it kind of puts a damper on things, yeah, and I kind of have to be like, thank you. But you know what? This is this is a positive, and yeah, and so yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Nice.
SPEAKER_06:So that's what I do with them now.
SPEAKER_03:Well, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your story with me. Um and through the tears, through the fuck face, through it all. Uh we're both crying on both sides of these cameras right now. So I'm sure every listener out there is uh there's not a dry eye, people have pulled over right now to wipe their eyes. So thank you so much for sharing. I know it's a super sensitive topic. Um one last question here before we get off. And that is if Tara were listening right now, what would you want her to know?
SPEAKER_07:You've got me on that one. Wow. I just miss her like crazy. I mean, she already knows. She already knows that I miss her like crazy, and everything sucks without her, and we're gonna be okay. I guess that would be it. That and her legacy continues with her workouts. They name the gym for her. She's got a a bridge out here, there's memorials, there's there's a lot. Her name's Which is really important to me. So thank you for giving me this opportunity to talk about it. I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_03:I appreciate you. Ladies and gentlemen, I can't say anything else, but that is it. You guys can hit me up. You know all the ways. Ladies and gentlemen, that is a Mergers to Music podcast.
SPEAKER_04:Go to heaven shall love for the father and son. Oh how we cried for day you left us gathered round your great greet. Wish I could see angels' faces when they hear your sweet voices. Go rest high on the mountain. Son you've done go to heaven the for the floor.
