San Jose Mercury News
OAKLAND, Calif. — Angela Dunakin was at her son’s Babe Ruth League game in Tracy on that sunny, clear Saturday. Tamra Hege, then-president of the Oakland Museum Women’s Board, was busy dealing with the wrap-up of the board’s annual White Elephant Sale, having just announced 2009’s fundraising success. Nikki Romans had returned to her Danville home after shopping with her husband, before he was called in on his day off. Jennifer Sakai was home in Castro Valley with her 4-year-old daughter, planning a round of errands.
There were no premonitions of doom. No alarming dreams, meaningful glances or intuitions of last goodbyes. Instead, March 21 began as an uneventful, even pleasant, spring day for the families of the four Oakland police officers who would be fatally shot that afternoon. The men’s wives, parents and even their children knew the risk was always present — bad things happened, there were tense situations, close calls — but the officers had always come home.
That didn’t happen a year ago today, and the ensuing moments, weeks and months have brought periods of unbearable grief and unforeseen challenges for the officers’ families, dealing with protracted funerals, public memorials and media attention. Yet gratitude has also emerged, with unfailing support from friends, relatives, officers, members of their respective communities and even from one another.
In the past few weeks, Angela Dunakin has been experiencing “tons of anxiety attacks,” she said, which she attributed to the approach of the unpleasant anniversary. Her husband, 18-year Oakland Police Department veteran Sgt. Mark Dunakin, 40, was the first motorcycle officer shot and killed by 26-year-old parolee Lovelle Mixon during a traffic stop on MacArthur Boulevard in East Oakland.
As a retired Alameda County sheriff’s deputy, Angela had many discussions with her husband about the dangers of their jobs and how their children — Anthony, now 16, who wants to join the military and become a police officer, Sienna, 14, and Patrick, 9 — would be cared for if something happened to one parent. “Things were put in place,” she said. “It was a conversation we had all the time. We had it with the children.”
They hadn’t accounted for every outcome, however. About a month before Mark was killed, Angela experienced a cancer scare, and it was not until a few days after her husband’s death that test results came back negative. “Before I got the results I was thinking, What if (the children) lost both parents?” she said.
The day of the shootings, Mark was still asleep when Angela left the house to run errands before Patrick’s baseball game, so she didn’t see him that morning. She spoke with him on the phone at 7:54 a.m. — she knows the exact time — and again at 11:13 a.m. Then, during the game, officers arrived at the field to notify her of her husband’s death.
Shortly after Mark was killed, “I couldn’t remember anything about him,” she said. “Now I have flashes of things, but I still have not dreamed of him. I’m still in denial. I’m still in shock. It breaks my heart. We had a good marriage. He was my best friend. I would not wish this on anybody.”
Officer John Hege, 41, was a 10-year department veteran and the second motorcycle officer shot that day. He was taken off life support in the days after the shooting, and his family carried out his wishes to donate his organs, which were said to have saved the lives of four men in need of transplants.
Hege had been a happy bachelor living in Concord, yet remained close with his parents, John and Tamra Hege. “I think we’re the only family who lives in Oakland, so we’ve been more directly impacted by the press and TV reports,” said Hege’s mother in a reserved, matter-of-fact tone. “The time has gone very fast. Things have been difficult, but I feel very strongly that everybody handles things like this differently.”
And there has been much to handle, even just the practical tasks of going through their son’s possessions, selling his car, his motorcycle, his house.
“Even now, there are still things that have to be taken care of,” she said. “We have to do John’s taxes from last year. You really don’t think about things like that when something like this happens.
“And every parent who has lost a child learns a lot about them after their death,” she said. “Most of the time, people tell you really nice things. Apparently he had reached out through Facebook and reconnected with a lot of people from Piedmont High, and many of them have since contacted us, which has been nice.”
She said it was helpful to continue her volunteer work with the Oakland Museum Women’s Board. “At the time this happened, I had a lot of responsibilities, things that absolutely had to get done. For me, it helped to keep up with normal activities. And with 100 women on the board, I had a fantastic support group. I couldn’t have asked for anything better on that front.”
It was roughly two hours after Dunakin and Hege were shot when longtime Oakland police sergeants and SWAT team members Ervin Romans, 43, and Daniel Sakai, 35, were shot and killed by Mixon when they entered an apartment building on 74th Avenue, where Mixon was hiding.
Earlier that morning, Nikki Romans had been rejoicing that her husband had the day off, his first in several weeks. “Normally on his day off, he’d just sleep all morning,” she said. “This day, he woke up early, happy, cheerful. We went on some errands. He was so excited that there was a half-off sale at the gym that day of Muscle Milk, so we came home with about 15 containers of that stuff, and I was laughing at him.”
They stopped at their Danville home to drop off their purchases, then continue their errands. Ervin ran back to the house to retrieve his cell phone.
It was ringing when he picked it up.
“That was the call that the two officers were down,” Nikki Romans said. “I could see his whole demeanor go from that light, weightless mode to Sgt. Romans mode. Then my husband went out the door, and an hour and a half later, he was dead.”
Nikki Romans said the past year has been one of constant ups and downs. “There really has been no great week, no good month,” she said. “With the anniversary coming up, my emotions have been a little more on edge. Most people don’t go through a grief so publicly for so long. There have been so many memorials, and there are more coming up — we’re all going to a state memorial in Sacramento in May, and then the national one in Washington, D.C., after that. I love that people are remembering the men, but every time I go to an event honoring them, it takes at least a night or two to get over that again.”
Nikki and Ervin had been together about three years, and were a blended family with Kristina, 21; Justin, 18, who plans to follow his father’s footsteps into the Marine Corps; and Cameron, 11, all living in their home.
“They’ve had some personality changes — gotten angrier or sadder or more protective of each other,” she said. “It’s brought us closer together. And the OPD family is so huge. Not a week has gone by that someone hasn’t called to check on us. I’m connected with God and I know my husband is in a good place, looking over us constantly.”
Jennifer Sakai says her main support the past year has been her daughter, Jojiye, who will turn 5 this month.
“My daughter is a remarkably strong person. She gets it from her dad,” Jennifer Sakai wrote last week in an e-mail, feeling it too difficult to speak about the events. “She understands her dad died and won’t be coming back. The hard part is when she misses her dad — they were extremely close — so much that all she can do to express herself is cry for him. The sadness in her eyes breaks my heart every time.”
In addition to his SWAT duties, Daniel Sakai was a canine handler, and the family still has his beloved police dog, Doc.
Jennifer Sakai is also a police officer, with the UC Berkeley force. Though her husband was killed in the line of duty, she says the tragedy has not changed how she views her own work. “People who become peace officers are unique people. They are society’s sheepdogs, and I’m proud to work alongside them.”
Mixon was also killed in the March 21 shootout. His family declined to be interviewed for this story.
Copyright 2010 San Jose Mercury News