SANTA CRUZ — Nearly one year after Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s deputy Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller was killed in the line of duty, a motorcycle brigade roared into the sheriff’s headquarters to honor Gutzwiller, alongside his former colleagues.
Six bikes and two trailers — covered with headshot photos of more than 330 law enforcement officials killed on the job last year — were met by sheriff staff, many wiping tears from their eyes, speaking quietly amongst themselves.
“It was always a bright, happy face, but then when he smiled and looked at you, it was just like the sun,” Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office employee Emily Casterson said of Gutzwiller.
On June 6, 2020, the 38-year-old Gutzwiller was fatally shot responding to a Ben Lomond 911 call during which the officer was ambushed by gunfire. The Santa Cruz native left behind his wife and two young children.
Steven Carrillo, Gutzwiller’s accused killer, was a Air Force sergeant living in the Santa Cruz Mountains and reportedly part of the antigovernment, militant group the Boogaloo Bois.
Described by Sherriff staff as gregarious, fiercely positive and empathetic, a year later, Gutzwiller’s death sticks with the community.
When asked what Casterson and fellow Sherrif’s office colleague Lisa Zack would remember most about Gutzwiller, both responded in synchronicity with “his smile.”
“You’ll read things about people that passed, and those are great, wonderful stories, but Damon … he’s literally the best person in this whole office,” Zack said.
End of watch procession
Casterson and Zack gathered with staff Friday and a group of motorcyclists traveling across the country to memorialize Gutzwiller, as well as hundreds of other law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty.
“Those officers, they wake up every morning or night for a shift that they don’t know if they’re going to come home from to see their wife, children, brothers, sisters, mother … they do that everyday,” Jason Vallieres said, a member of the End of Watch ride group.
Vallieres and the group hail from Washington state.
The Beyond the Call of Duty Ride to Remember 2020 motorcyclists are traveling 22,500 miles over the course of three months, to honor officers from 46 states, spread across 194 departments.
“It’s important that we do this, to let officers know that there’s a reason for that and there’s people that care about this today,” Vallieres said. “It’s equally important for the survivors to know that their people did this for a reason, and that there’s still people who stand behind them and love them.”
The group also provides survivors with access to support groups and mental health specialists, Beyond the Call of Duty Chairman Jagrut Shah said.
“We see a lot of loss in what we do everyday and we also lose fellow team members. I think its important that each department realize that they’re in the same hurt as another department, and that survivors know they’re not alone,” Shah said, who’s a former law enforcement official.
What struck the founder about Gutzwiller was his infectious smile.
“Everyone I talked to has said the same thing, that that smile would never go away, he would wake up with it and go to bed with it,” Shah said.
The Sheriff’s Office will hold a closed, private remembrance ceremony Sunday before a new memorial stone commemorating the names of the agency’s four fallen officers over its history later will be unveiled at the agency’s Live Oak headquarters.
“As I reflect back on June 6, 2020 and the response from law enforcement and fire service, but also our community … I was so pleased with the outpouring of support, the emails, the phone calls and the flowers and people dropping off food,” Sheriff Jim Hart said. “Many, many people didn’t know Damon, but they felt that loss and they felt a need to stop by and express that to us and it really meant a lot. It was very uplifting and it was a shot in the arm that we needed at that time.”
The loss of Gutzwiller was the type of event that “leaves a hole in your heart,” Hart said, but remains important to observe.
“What I never want to have happen is that people forget that that incident occurred,” Hart said. “There’s been so much with civil unrest and all the things that have occurred across the country that it’s easy to forget some of these things as a community.”
Gutzwiller, who served the sheriff’s office for 14 years, was a deeply valued community member, Hart said,
“I want people to remember that one, Damon was a really really fine person and he was a great deputy sheriff and he sacrificed his life on a call for service and left behind a young family, a wife,” Hart said.
“He was a young man, he had his whole life in front of him. If people can just take a moment to appreciate that and think about him and his family a few minutes, I think that’s important.”