Riding in remembrance
Six Honolulu police officers are training to ride in the Police Unity Tour bike ride to Washington, D.C. Officer John Zeuzheim and Sgt. Ninette Vonier do a practice run up Round Top Drive in Honolulu. The Police Unity Tour ride is to honor fallen officers, including Honolulu police officers Glen Gaspar and Ryan Goto, whose names will be carved into the marble walls of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, D.C.
HPD pedaling unity
on memorial rideSix officers will join in a biking
fund-raiser to Washington, D.C.,
to honor slain police
Six Honolulu police officers will be going the distance for their fallen comrades next month by bicycling some 250 miles to the nation's capital.
The trip is a fund-raiser for the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, D.C., which holds the names of more than 16,000 officers who have died in the line of duty. This year, the names of two Honolulu police officers will be carved into the memorial's marble walls: officers Glen Gaspar and Ryan Goto.
"We want to do this because we lost two officers last year," said 18-year veteran Sgt. Ninette Vonier, who along with five other bicycle detail officers on "Team Hawaii" will ride for three days from Chesapeake, Va., starting May 10.
"The memorial fund does not get any government funding," she said. "This ride is to honor the fallen officers as well as their families. We want to let the families know that the officers will always be remembered and that their death was not in vain."
Officer Glen Gaspar was killed on March 4, 2003, when he was shot by then-fugitive Shane Mark at a Kapolei ice cream shop. Officer Ryan Goto was killed in a multivehicle collision on the H-1 freeway near Ko Olina on July 23. Alacia Williams, 10, of Maili, also died in that crash.
Gaspar and Goto will join 45 other Hawaii-based law enforcement officers whose names are on the memorial. Some of them died as far back as the 1920s.
The memorial is supported by donations, many of them from participants in the Police Unity Tour bike ride, an event started by New Jersey police officers in 1997 and which for the first time will have a contingent from Hawaii.
"We're just going to be so pumped up we're not going to feel anything ... I hope," said Vonier. "But we've got a lot of great motivation. ... Three guys on the wall were my classmates at the academy."
Vonier and the other officers participating in the ride are doing so on their own time. Those wanting to donate to the memorial fund on behalf of Team Hawaii can do so at the Honolulu Police Federal Credit Union or through www.policeunitytour.org.
"Eventually we'd like to have officers from every county riding with us," said Vonier. "We just thought this would be a great thing to do ... to not just remember Ryan and Glen, but also all the other officers killed in the line of duty in Hawaii."
