Veteran officer given merit award

Spokane Police Officer Kim Thomas asked to come in late Wednesday morning. He’d spent another long night volunteering his time.

Patrol Sgt. Joe Walker fibbed and told Thomas that a couple of officers were off-duty and that he needed the 29-year veteran to be at the 9 a.m. roll call.

Thomas arrived to find his wife and a room full of police and City Hall officials. He nervously shifted on his feet as Deputy Chief Al Odenthal read a message from Chief Roger Bragdon awarding Thomas with the department’s Medal of Merit.

“You possess the intrinsic nature to help others, and you go about it efficiently, professionally and with a humanity that others would do well to imitate,” Odenthal read.

Walker praised Thomas for helping organize the effort to get a city ordinance requiring the use of helmets for bicycle riders and skateboarders.

“I will never be able to describe in words what Officer Thomas has meant to this department and community, but he is everything a police officer should be,” Walker said. “It’s never about him. It’s about who he works for – the community.”

Thomas said he got involved with the helmet law in 2003 after he worked a collision at Jackson Avenue and Greene Street, where a pickup truck hit a 7-year-old boy who was riding a bicycle without a helmet. The boy later died.

“I just got tired of seeing little kids hurt or killed,” he said.

Thomas currently serves as president of the Greater Spokane Substance Abuse Council. He has taught traffic law and collision reconstruction to other officers.

Walker said Thomas has also given talks to elderly drivers about driving safely. Bragdon credited all that work for reducing crashes.

Walker described how Thomas cared for his best friend and fellow officer, Gordon Simmons, who died of cancer in 2001.

Thomas “kept dragging himself into work after spending all night with Gordie,” Walker said. “Of the 300 commissioned people around here, everyone would agree he is the nicest person to be around.”

For his part, Thomas said he was embarrassed by the award.

“I think we are all doing one job. That job is public safety,” he said.

Thomas started on the force in February 1975. The 52-year-old father, with two children in college, said he doesn’t have any immediate plans to retire.

“I’m still having fun,” he said. “I look up to a lot of officers in this department. I look to them for guidance.”

Asked about the comments from Bragdon and Walker about how other officers now look up to him, Thomas responded: “It’s surprising. It’s humbling.”