Officer’s Talents Distinguished Him and Put Him in Danger

Tommy De La Rosa, the Fullerton police officer killed Thursday during an undercover operation, was a model narcotics officer, according to those who knew him.

He was friendly, outgoing, experienced and cautious.

But the talents that set De La Rosa apart also placed him in danger.

As a bilingual officer able to easily assume the identities of drug dealers of many nationalities, De La Rosa was usually the one who made contacts with drug suspects, Fullerton Police Lt. Bud Lathrop said.

And he was the one who led the way in Thursday’s drug bust, during which he was fatally wounded in an ambush.

De La Rosa, 43, a 10-year veteran of the Fullerton Police Department, had worked undercover narcotics for the past four or five years and was well-respected by his peers, Lathrop said.

Married with four children, De La Rosa was the recipient of several awards, one of them as Officer of the Year, bestowed by the Orange County Latino Peace Officers Assn. in 1989.

“Ironically, I ran into the guy who’s the president of the Latino Peace Officers Assn. today (Thursday, prior to the ambush),” Lathrop said. “Rudy (Sanchez) told me there was going to be another awards banquet in August, and I said, ‘Are you going to give Tommy another award?’ and we kind of laughed about it.”

Sanchez said he was shocked when he learned of De La Rosa’s death at the association’s board meeting Thursday night.

“It was a real shocker,” Sanchez said. “We kidded around, but we didn’t think this would ever happen.”

Sanchez said those who knew De La Rosa called him “the man with two hats.”

“He could be a Puerto Rican one day, a Columbian the next, a Mexican the next. He was extremely talented,” Sanchez said. “And he was always there to joke. If somebody was down, he was always there to help out. He fit the part of undercover work, like what you see in the movies.”

The Fullerton undercover narcotics squad De La Rosa belonged to is a five-member team that has won numerous awards for its aggressive work. The team has taken investigations as far north as San Francisco and as far south as the Mexican border.