Administrator’s Work Helps Deal with Sorrow that Follows Fatalities in the Line of Duty
By Angela Hill, Tri Valley Herald (Pleasanton, Calif.)
OAKLAND -- Every time an Oakland police officer’s life ends during the line of duty, a formidable mission begins.
It’s the painful, pressured and exhausting task of coordinating the massive funeral services, arranging police helicopter fly-overs and motorcades and receptions for thousands of people, working closely and gently with distraught families to help them deal with mortuaries, insurance companies, government agencies and the ensuing Mount Everest of paperwork.
It’s a major undertaking.
Good thing there’s Renee Lundberg. She’s the person at the Oakland Police Officers Association who performs this tough task. And sadly, because of several “line-of-duty” funerals during the 12 years Lundberg has been on the job -- such as the most recent one for Officer Will Seuis in July -- she has gotten very good at it.
So good, she is known throughout the state for developing practical procedures for such events. She has been honored by her comrades in Oakland and several other California police agencies.
And she’s the steady hand for spouses, parents and children of fallen officers, shaken to the core by the loss and turmoil.
It takes a special person to do this job. One with a kind heart, a level head and enough chutzpah to battle state agencies for a family’s rightful benefits.
Lundberg is that special person. But she won’t cop to it.
“I have a lot of help. It’s not just me,” Lundberg said with sincere modesty from her office not far from the police station.
“I dole out a lot of orders. A law-enforcement funeral takes many, many people to accomplish,” she said. “You’ve got fly-overs, motors, flowers, music, receptions. It’s overwhelming to the family to arrive and have
2,000 people there. Then we’re working with the families on a constant basis for months after that. I cannot take the credit for pulling that whole thing off.
“I’m just somebody who takes all the loose ends and ties them in a little knot,” she said.
While “knot-tier” would indeed be more accurate, Lundberg’s current title at OPOA is “executive manager.” Her job began merely as a part-time position, then evolved over the years as she began to see the need for a more personal approach when an officer dies.
“I started to think, ‘What if that’s your family? How would you want people to handle it?’ Back when I started here, there was nothing written about how to do this. Now we have protocols. A procedure list.”
Memorial for the fallen
Lundberg also initiated and continues to manage the annual Oakland public memorial for fallen officers, which brings together families who lost a loved one as far back as the 1940s.
Just recently, Lundberg arranged to have an officer privately take Seuis’ wife to the memorial wall in the police department lobby to see her husband’s name carved in the black marble for the first time “so she wouldn’t be shocked,” Lundberg said.
“That kind of thing never happened before,” said Bob Valledon, OPOA president. “It used to be, after an officer’s funeral, nobody ever saw the family again. It was done. Our motor guys would go to the wall and to the gravesites to pay respects every year.
“But keeping in contact is really important for them. And it’s all because of Renee.
“It’s a tough job she has,” Valledon said. “She tries to play the strong person, that nothing bothers her. But it hits her heart. You’ll see her at a funeral, then all of a sudden you’ll see her with the sunglasses on.”
Lundberg’s job has often been hard. For one thing, she knows all the Oakland officers, so when there’s a death, she feels the personal pain of losing a friend.
In addition, her life gets turned upside down for weeks. “My kids have grown up with this, so they’re used to it,” she said. “And OPOA is great. They understand it takes a lot out of you, and they give me a week off after each one is over.”
Class on line-of-duty deaths
Lundberg also teaches classes in the police academy -- a whole section on line-of-duty deaths -- on how to notify a family, or how to deal with it if it’s your partner who has died.
She also handles police department awards dinners, retirements and all the “off-duty” deaths. “Just because they’re off-duty doesn’t mean anything’s different,” she said.
And there’s more. Lundberg keeps in constant e-mail contact with the officers who have been deployed on military duty and sends them care packages.
And the part of the job that becomes most dear to her is what she calls, for lack of a better term, “after care” for the families -- keeping in contact.
In fact, many of the relatives Lundberg assists become her extended family. On her desk, she has a dozen school and graduation photos tucked in the corners of her clear plastic calendar cover -- not of her own kids, but of theirs. She gets invited to birthdays and special celebrations.
“I send cards, and I keep track of the spouses to see what’s going on,” she said. “I like to make sure they’re all informed of anything they need to know about from the department. There’s almost a need for them to stay connected with OPD. That’s where their spouse was.
“A lot of the families, I’ve watched their kids grow up. You learn to know someone extremely quickly. It’s a close-knit bond that would normally have taken years to establish, when you’re dealing with families on an intimate level.”
Lucy Grijalva is one of Lundberg’s longtime friends. Her husband, William Grijalva, was shot and killed in the line of duty during a confrontation over a pit bull on Dec. 15, 1993, less than a year before he was set to retire from the police department.
“We were Renee’s first family,” Grijalva said. “She’s now pretty much the statewide authority on police funerals, which is kind of a sad thing to be known for. But she’s a very nurturing and very kind person.”
Grijalva, who lives in Benicia, is a member of the Northern California Chapter of Concerns of Police Survivors, a support group for families of police officers killed in the line of duty. So she is aware of the way various departments handle such tragedies.
“A lot of police departments try to pretend they don’t have survivor families around, because it makes them feel uncomfortable,” Grijalva said. “Because of Renee, Oakland’s different.”