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Faith & Service

Figure skater organizes event to honor fallen police officers

February 26, 2019

Senior Katherine Thacker, captain of the Lady Flames synchronized skating team, grew up without her father. He was an investigator in the Kentucky Department of Alcohol Beverage Control. When she was 18 months old, he was shot and killed attempting to pull over an erratic driver.

Thacker has found a way to honor and memorialize her father and other officers killed in the line of duty. In 2016, she started “Words of Worth,” a letter-writing campaign for families of fallen officers. She has organized three events on campus thus far, most recently in November. With the help of her mother, former president of Concerns of Police Survivors (C.O.P.S), as well as Liberty’s Criminal Justice Club and Student Government Association, hundreds of Liberty students, including NCAA and Club Sports student-athletes, showed up to write encouraging letters to families of over 100 law enforcement officers who were killed last year. The event also included a panel discussion led by officers from the Lynchburg Police Department as well as police departments in Virginia Beach, New Jersey, and Kentucky.

“Every word and every sentence that’s written on this paper I know has a tremendous impact on the families,” Thacker said. “People care about what my father did. He put his life on the line in order to protect other people, and there are officers every single month who are dying trying to protect people in their communities. It’s important to say that we’re thankful for their job and for the time that they took away from their family in order to protect us.”

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