By Heather Hacking
Chico Enterprise-Record
BUTTE VALLEY, Calif. — A scholarship fund to help pay for a cadet to receive law enforcement training at Butte College has been created by the family of slain Red Bluff police officer David Mobilio, who was shot while gassing up his patrol car in 2002.
The family recently made a donation to the Butte College Foundation, and a ceremony was held last week as part of slain Officer National Police Week, which runs through Sunday.
The college has trained more than 5,000 cadets through the law enforcement academy, which began in the 1970s.
Mobilio graduated in the college’s 91st academy in 1995. He served as a liaison officer for the Red Bluff Police Department Drug Abuse Resistance Education program at elementary schools.
He is one of at least 14 graduates from the Butte law enforcement academy to have lost their lives in the line of duty.
Butte College Foundation Executive Director John Gliha explained the college does not know if there are more than that, because graduates receive law enforcement jobs all over, and agencies may not contact the college when there is a death.
A monument has been placed at Butte College’s main campus, near the Allied Health/Public Services building and includes plaques with the names of law enforcement academy graduates who died while on duty.
Last week family members and Mobilio’s widow, Linda Mobilio-Keeling, gathered at the memorial with Butte President Diana Van Der Ploeg.
Recruits currently in the law enforcement academy polish the name plates on the memorial weekly, showing respect to officers who have died, as well as to remind recruits of the dangerous career they are entering.
Gliha said additional contributions to the Mobilio fund are welcome and people can send check to the Butte College Foundation, 3536 Campus Drive, Oroville, CA, 95965. Write “David Mobilio fund” in the memo line.
For more information: 895-2359, or www.buttefoundation.org.
Copyright 2009 Chico Enterprise-Record