Police officers ride to honor fallen compatriots

SUFFOLK

The officer was working the graveyard shift when he was called to break up a fight between a woman and her boyfriend outside a restaurant. As Officer Andrew Widman moved in, the boyfriend shot the Ft. Myers, Fla., police officer in the face, killing him.

Almost a year later, Widman's picture sat on the back of Collier County, Fla., Sheriff's Cpl. Bruce Cordivari's bike.

On the front, between his handlebars, was a picture of Chesapeake Detective Jarrod Shivers, with whom Cordivari worked for six years while he was in Chesapeake.

The two pictures - along with blue and silver bracelets engraved with Widman's and Shivers' names - are traveling with Cordivari on a three-day ride from Hampton Roads to Washington, D.C., as reminders of whom he is riding for.

Sunday marked the start of this year's Police Unity Tour, an annual ride that brings police officers from across the country together in memory of those who died in the line of duty and to raise money for the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial and Museum.

Hundreds of law enforcement officers from Minnesota, California and Florida began riding north from Virginia on Sunday. Others, from New York and New Jersey, are riding south. They'll meet in Washington on Tuesday and ride toward the memorial together.

Organizers said they were expecting about 1,100 cyclists.

"Law enforcement, we're all a family," said New Kent County Sheriff's Deputy Edd Jones. "It doesn't matter where you're from."

The Virginia chapter was riding a route that would take members more than 100 miles Sunday, up U.S. 60 into Richmond. T hey took frequent breaks, and their first that morning was at a fire station, in Suffolk, about 18 miles into the ride.

Each rider is assigned a fallen officer to remember, with stories ranging from Delos Wood, a sheriff's deputy who was shot and killed in Louisiana in 1934 to Deputy Sheriff John Walter Sanford, who was killed in Northumberland County, Va., in 2005 when he was struck by a driver coming toward him on the wrong side of the road.

Once at the memorial in Washington, officers often try to meet up with the families of the officers assigned to them, or later, they might send them the bracelets engraved with their loved ones' name.

Newport News police Officer Steven Rutherford was shot and killed in 1994 while working undercover. His parents came out to watch the Unity Tour the first year it passed through Hampton Roads and have come out to stand by the road and wave every year since, said Virginia Beach police Sgt. Scott Humphrey.

"I look at them and I think, 'These could be my parents,' " said Humphrey, who is on his 10th Unity Tour. "And I know that they appreciate what we're doing. I know that it's meaningful to them."

Alicia Wittmeyer, (757) 222-5216, alicia.wittmeyer@pilotonline.com