‘Daddy’s Flag’

Seven-year-old Gabriella Aguirre was wearing an awfully big hat, but judging by the donation she made to the Saticoy Community Resource Center, it is one she’s quickly growing into.

Some would say Gabi, as she is known to those who love her, has had to grow up all too quickly in the three years since her father, Sheriff’s Deputy Peter Aguirre Jr., was slain during a Meiners Oaks domestic-violence call.

But Gabi looked like a very little girl making an enormous gesture Tuesday as she donned her father’s pea-green dress uniform hat, tilted playfully to one side, and presented an American flag to the Sheriff’s Department. The flag, which had been given to her at her father’s memorial service, is for the Sheriff’s Department-run Saticoy Branch Resource Center.

Last month Gabi and her mother, Dina Aguirre, 29, were driving past the newly opened centerwhen Gabi noticed a flag did not fly in front of the building. Her mother had been teaching her about government buildings, pointing them out around town.

“I’m going to give them my daddy’s flag,” she told her mom.

Dina Aguirre said Gabi wanted the month-old community policing facility to have an American flag of its own.

Gabi, a first-grader at Citrus Glen Elementary School, said she did it “because I thought it was nice.”

Tuesday, community members and law enforcement officials didn’t see Gabi’s gift as simply a generous act. It was a way to remember a hero, and a celebration of a daughter’s tenacity after the loss of her father.

“I think she’s my strength,” Dina Aguirre said. “I think she carries Peter’s heart and strength inside of her.”

Watching Gabi chat with Ventura County Sheriff Bob Brooks amid the other law enforcement brass who turned out for Tuesday’s ceremony, Dina Aguirre said the flag’s donation is “too big for her.”

“It’s Peter speaking out,” she said. “It’s his way of giving a positive influence on her. He’s there to guide her.”

About a month ago, Gabi dropped a letter by Brooks’ office. Written on pink construction paper in the large, haphazard print of a 7-year-old, she wrote: “Dear Sheriff Brooks, I would like to give you my daddy flag in honor of him. Can you please hang it in Saticoy storefront office. I would be happy to see it every day. Thank you very [sic], Sheriff Brooks. Sincerely, Gabriella Aguirre.”

She also signed her father’s name to the letter.

The letter now hangs framed with her father’s photo and the flag she received at his memorial service. Brooks said officials wanted to preserve the flag inside the building and fly a symbolic, smaller one from a lanyard in front of the resource center.

The sheriff lifted Gabi into the air on the center’s steps Tuesday and helped her hoist the banner. A congregation of about 30 community members and law enforcement officials then recited the pledge of allegiance as Gabi stood proudly above them, her left hand over her chest, her wandering little-girl eyes scanning the crowd.

Many of the uniformed deputies Gabi saw have become like family to her, said Marylinda Guzman, a Santa Barbara Police Department detective who is a friend of the Aguirre family.

“Every sheriff’s deputy you see is a father to her,” she said.