Mourners Recall Slain LAPD Officer’s Courage and Humor

Los Angeles Police Officer Steve Gajda was killed leading his partners on a New Year’s Eve patrol, but those who remembered him at his funeral service Friday said the example Gajda set as an officer, son, husband and brother will continue to guide them in their lives.

Colleagues, friends and family eulogizing Gajda at the Calvary Chapel in Diamond Bar said his sense of humor helped them to cope with the danger of police work, and his courage inspired them, even if it might have prompted his death.

“Steve took the point, which means he confronted a situation in the position of greatest danger,” recalled Cesar Ramirez, who had been Gajda’s partner. “He often assumed that role, and he was not afraid to jump into a gun battle.”

According to police, Gajda, 29, was part of a task force working to curb New Year’s Eve celebratory gunfire when he and two partners went to a Boyle Heights house to break up a loud party. As they pulled up in their black-and-white cruiser, Mario Machado--a 17-year-old who was an alleged gunman in a gang-related slaying--began to run away.

When Gajda ran after Machado, the youth turned around and shot him in the head with a handgun. Gajda and his partners returned fire, killing Machado.

The holiday shooting was a reminder of the perils of routine police work, and thousands of police officers and sheriff’s deputies from Los Angeles and throughout Southern California turned out to remember their fallen comrade.

The 2,200-seat sanctuary at the massive church--a converted glass-and-steel office building-- was filled, as was a 900-seat overflow room. Hundreds of others stood in hallways and peered into the service through windows.

“All of us live with the thought that we could suffer the same fate as Steve. One thing that enables us to come back to work every day is the memory of those partners,” said John Incontro, Gajda’s boss in the Los Angeles Police Department’s CRASH unit, a special gang enforcement team at the Hollenbeck station.

Along with Gajda’s friends, family and police officers, the service was attended by Los Angeles City Council members, Police Chief Bernard C. Parks, Mayor Richard Riordan and Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block.

Gajda’s colleagues said that while he led his unit in arrests and citations, he also enjoyed telling jokes and doing impressions, even “in the trenches.” His partner Ramirez said Gajda had designed a logo for the station featuring the Tasmanian Devil cartoon character, which remains on a mirror there.

A seven-year member of the LAPD, Gajda joined the department after a stint as a helicopter mechanic in the Army. He served in the Army’s 101st Airborne Division.

Born in Park Ridge, Ill., Gajda moved with his family to the San Fernando Valley in 1978 and graduated from Cleveland High School in Reseda in 1986.

His first marriage ended in divorce. His ex-wife and daughter from that marriage now live in Tennessee.

Gajda and his widow, Belinda, married two years ago and lived in Corona. At the church service, she spoke her final public words to Steve: “I love you. I miss you, Honey Bear. I’ll see you when I come home.”

Gajda’s father, Steve, said that in addition to his son’s achievements as a soldier and policeman, he found “greater joy in the depth of his concern, his sensitivity and his artistry.”

A cortege of police cars with lights flashing accompanied Gajda’s body to the Forest Lawn Covina Hills cemetery.

A lone bagpipe played “Amazing Grace” as eight officers wheeled in Gajda’s coffin. Parks, on bended knee, offered the folded flag that had covered Gajda’s casket to his widow. As he did so, hundreds of Gajda’s Hollenbeck Division colleagues stood at attention, their tears blending with the midmorning drizzle.