At Arnold Service, Virtues Extolled, Ills Acknowledged

About 300 relatives, friends and neighbors gathered under a tent Saturday to say a tearful farewell to a former police officer turned bank robbery suspect who was killed by the FBI last week.

“We are never going to know or understand exactly what caused Kevin to change,” the Rev. Glen Kreun told the crowd gathered at Saddleback Valley Community Church to pay last respects to Kevin Duane Arnold, a former Fountain Valley police officer.

“Yes, Kevin did change,” the minister said, “but one year doesn’t make a life.”

Until 1994, Arnold had been a respected police officer. He was awarded the Medal of Valor for his role in apprehending a burglar in 1989. Last December, however, the Mission Viejo resident was convicted of embezzling nearly $40,000 from the Fountain Valley police officers’ union, of which he was president.

Arnold was fired from the police force and was sentenced to be confined in his home for six months.

Then on Monday, FBI agents cornered the 34-year-old father of four in a shopping center parking lot and tried to arrest him in connection with a yearlong string of 12 bank robberies they believe he committed beginning in June, 1994, netting nearly $32,000. Arnold was shot to death in the confrontation.

On Saturday, though, those who loved him preferred to remember another side of the former police officer’s life, a side in which they’d known him as a loyal friend, a helpful neighbor, and a loving father, husband and son.

“Each of you knew him a little bit,” Kreun told the crowd gathered under a tent serving as the church’s temporary sanctuary until its new building is completed in September. “Each of you knew a little segment of his life, but today we will put it all together to look at the Kevin his neighbors liked and his friends loved. A saint he was not, but a good father he was and, for many years, a good cop.”

Arnold’s lifelong friend, Keith Kodera, evoked laughter with stories of their teen-age antics at Fountain Valley High School. Once, he said, they started a food fight in the school cafeteria. And later they threw apples at a bus containing the school’s varsity football team.

But through it all, Kodera said, Arnold remained a loyal friend and trusted colleague.

“He was one of the best policemen I’ve known and an outstanding human being,” said Kodera, now a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy. “He loved his wife, his family and his children. And he was there for me in times of crisis when being a policeman seemed like more than I could handle.”

Arnold’s older brother, Mark, agreed.

“He was a consummate police officer,” said Mark Arnold, who is also a policeman. “Anything less than perfection was not an option; in my book he was and is a hero, a cop’s cop. Somewhere along the line, the weight of life took its toll--you can only be Atlas for so long.”

As the eulogies continued, some mourners gazed at two large portraits of Kevin Arnold set on a stage in front of them.

In one, the smiling young man posed with his wife, Kathleen, whom he had met in high school. The other, draped with his Medal of Valor, depicted the uniformed officer with his police dog, whose death last year, some colleagues have speculated, may have contributed to Arnold’s unraveling after having been involved in several officer-involved shootings.

The service ended with a dirge played on a bagpipe as Arnold’s two brothers--both law enforcement officers--folded an American flag and handed it to Kathleen Arnold.

“Kevin, I’m so proud to be your brother,” Mark Arnold had said in his eulogy. “You are my confidant and best friend--I love you and miss you.”

After the service was over, Lenita Arnold--Kevin Arnold’s mother--summed up her feelings regarding the recent events involving her son.

“He was a great person,” she said. “He was my gentle giant, but facts are facts--what he did was wrong. We had no clue that he was as disturbed as he was.”