A Family Now Must Cope With Life After Death

I am going to do something today that I have never done before, and might never do again. And I feel uncomfortable as hell doing this, because I am not some do-gooder, looking to reserve a little space for myself in heaven.

I’m going to give you an address.

And I am going to ask you to reach into your pocket and find a few bucks. Whatever you can spare.

Then send it to:

Sylvia Cuesta

c/o Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher

333 S. Grand, Suite 4600

Los Angeles CA 90071

(Attn: Tom Holliday)

Sylvia Cuesta is the widow of the L.A. police officer who was shot in the back of the head Sunday morning while sitting in his patrol car.

She is left with two daughters--one 18 months old, the other 4 weeks.

There is nothing anyone can do to bring back a good cop. Nobody can bring back a father who was on his first day back on the job after a month’s paternity leave.

But you can help that cop’s family.

Go ahead, make my day.

*

I spoke Tuesday afternoon with Capt. Jim Tatreau, who runs the robbery-homicide division. Flowers were strewn everywhere in the Southwest station, sent by friends and strangers alike.

Tatreau has been a cop for more than 28 years. He knows the life, understands the dangers.

“I’ve got a couple of sons in it too,” he says. “One with the L.A. County sheriff’s, another one in Mesa, Ariz.”

He prays never to get the worst call in the world, similar to the one that came Sunday, a little after 12:30 a.m.

That’s when the captain got the news that a 26-year-old officer had just been ambushed by some gun-packing creature on Carlin Street, while in a car outside a loud party.

Officer Richard Gabaldon fired back, in vain, while his partner lay dying.

There has been a dragnet out in the city ever since, hunting Fil Cuesta’s killers. This one is personal for the LAPD’s men and women.

“Not much surprises most of them,” Tatreau says, “but to lose an officer in such a reckless manner, from such a stupid act. . . .”

Except for phones ringing, the station house is quiet. It is not abnormally noisy with activity, not crammed with cops wall to wall.

“That’s because they’re out in the field, working very hard to find who did this,” Tatreau explains. “And we will. Don’t worry, we will.”

One of the officers who knew Cuesta best is putting in some significant hours, Tatreau says. He would like nothing better than to bring in the shooter.

Other officers checked in Tuesday at the Cuestas’ home in Norwalk. They offered condolences to Filbert Cuesta Sr., who is grieving over the loss of his son and wondering what made some coward shoot him. They paid their respects to Sylvia Cuesta, who is trying to cope with what happened; to Samantha, 1 1/2, who just went to Disneyland with her dad, and to Sierra, 1 month, who will never get to speak to her dad.

It’s enough to bring teardrops to the eyes of the toughest cops in town.

“Just so discouraging,” Tatreau says.

Only 18 days before, two police officers in Washington were shot to death--not while busting down a door in a drug raid or exchanging gunfire at a robbery, but while peaceably standing guard at a legislative building. A man with a gun in his hand and a screw loose in his head apparently took their lives for no reason.

Now this--a four-year LAPD officer and a part-time college student, studying criminal justice, gets shot while trying to make sure that no gang members disturbed a neighborhood wedding party.

Murder without motive--again.

*

I have been reading about Officer Filbert H. Cuesta for a couple of days now.

Here was an exemplary peace officer who was part of the department’s Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums anti-gang operation and who always made time for younger kids from his own neighborhood’s streets, so they wouldn’t grow up to become hoodlums.

There is nothing his fellow cops can do for Fil Cuesta now but catch his killer and encourage anyone with information on the crime to call (213) 485-2129 or 485-2504 and to tell what they know.

But there’s something others can do.

Help his daughters. Try to send a couple of bucks to a fund that the LAPD has established for the Cuesta family.

I think we owe it to him.

Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053, or phone (213) 237 7366.