Hero cop ‘wanted to save every one’
He was everything a community could hope for in a cop.
Slain Boulder Officer Eric Talley, 51, was by all accounts a devoted husband, father, son, sibling, friend — and above all, a policeman, who gave up a six-figure job to join the force and make a difference.
“I honestly know my brother, when he heard there was a shooting in a supermarket, I know his first thought was ‘There are kids in there,’ ” Kristine Brooks told The Washington Post of her hero sibling, a married father of seven.
“He loved his kids. His family shopped at King Soopers.
“I know Eric would have wanted to save every single one of those lives. I know why he flew in there first, because he was thinking, ‘There are families in that store.’
“Everybody in that grocery store has a sweet family member, sweet people that miss them and that are aching. That’s what Eric was trying to prevent — that grief,” she said.
One of Talley’s pals told the outlet that the officer had been working a lucrative IT job when he made the life-altering move to law enforcement in 2010 at age 40 after a close friend’s fatal DUI crash.
“That kind of propelled him into law enforcement,” said Jeremy Herko, a lieutenant with the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office in Colorado.
“He cashed out of his 401(k),” Herko said of Talley — who had a master’s degree and a black belt in karate, and who helped homeschool his children with his wife.
Herko told The Denver Post that he frantically tried to reach Talley as word of Monday’s slaughter broke.
“I sent [Talley] a text asking him if he was OK, and of course, he never texted back,” Herko said, choking back tears. “That’s the life of a police officer.’’