POLICE LT. RETURNS TO HIS ALMA MATER
As a watch commander for the Vacaville Police Department, Lt. Aaron Dahl has been on shifts that have brought him all over the city he grew up in.
That includes his former elementary school, Eugene Padan Elementary, alongside department colleagues each month to build relationships between law enforcement and youth.
“I've had a blast,” he said. “The kids love it, I love it. My wife comes with me sometimes, my mom comes with me sometimes, they all love it.”
Dahl attended Padan in the mid-1980s when he was in fifth and sixth grade. Although his time at the school was brief, he has a lot of memories of playing tetherball on the playground and meeting new friends, some of whom he still knows today. Dahl joined the Vacaville Police Department in 2002.
At the start of the 2022-23 school year, Dahl and Capt. Chris Polen were assigned to Padan, where they stood at the entrance and gave students high fives and stickers.
“On the first day of school, we try to get as many officers to as many schools as we possibly could, just to be out in the public, hang out with the kids, say hi to them just because we enjoy it,” he said. “It's what our job is, and we do a good job at it.”
While doing this, Dahl decided to make it a regular thing.
“I just kind of got a wild idea that I was going to have a little bit of fun, and I just walked and picked a classroom, went and sat down at a desk, and it kind of went from there,” he said.
In September, Dahl brought in a K-9 to show the kids. In October, he brought in pumpkins to decorate. In November, he had students cook a Thanksgiving meal. In December, he threw a Christmas party where his mother, Kathie Stephenson, a former instructional assistant at Padan, made blankets and they gave out gifts, hosted pizza parties and sang carols in different classrooms.
This month saw Dahl, along with Officer Sean Kelly and Detective Kaley Sullivan, visiting Katie Vaclavik's third-grade classroom, where
he added to Vaclavik's ongoing lessons on courage by reading a story about one of history's greatest exemplars of it: baseball legend Jackie Robinson.
Dahl asked the class what their definition of courage was. One correctly defined it as “being brave.”
“All of you have courage,” he said. “It's with inside you, so when you come to school or something happens, you have courage to speak up and use your words, you have courage to do the right thing.”
Dahl delved further into this concept by reading from Spencer Johnson, M.D.'s 1977 picture book “The Value of Courage: The Story of Jackie Robinson.”
The book touches upon the pivotal moments of Robinson's life, from his growing up in California, playing baseball at UCLA, joining the Army during World War II, playing for the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro American League, being recruited by Branch Rickey to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers and become the first Black player in the major leagues, leading the team to a World Series victory in 1955 and being inducted to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.
Along the way, Robinson was frequently discriminated against and heckled, but as the book made clear, he was able to overcome these obstacles because of his courage and not letting this hostility get the better of him.
“You have to have courage to do hard things, and you have to have courage to do things you're afraid of,” Dahl said.
Dahl read the first half of the book and then handed it over to Sullivan to read the second half.
Because the students were well-behaved during the reading, Dahl brought them out to the parking lot where several police vehicles were stationed.
Kids got to climb into the back of a SWAT vehicle, straddle a parked motorcycle and test out the lights and sirens as well as use a PA system to call out to their teacher from the front seat of a police car.
Dahl said he hopes to build positive relationships with the kids.
“When they see me now, they run up and they want to give me a hug and we high five,” he said. “It's just ongoing relationship-building with these kids.”