Big crowd mourns deputy who was hit by bus
Pallbearers carry Alameda County sheriff's Deputy Michael Foley’s casket past rows of police officers and deputies.
Law enforcement officers from across the state gathered in Concord on Friday to pay respects to an Alameda County sheriff’s deputy who died after being struck by a bus in a parking lot at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin.
Traffic was stopped on Kirker Pass Road leading to the Concord Pavilion on Friday morning so the hearse carrying the body of Deputy Michael Foley could pass, flanked by a motorcade of California Highway Patrol officers.
Delegations from law enforcement agencies across the state lined the path as civilian mourners entered the amphitheater. The gold and silver of hundreds of police and sheriff’s badges gleamed in the sunlight. More than 2,000 mourners attended.
“I don’t think my dad
ever realized how many lives he touched, how many people he helped to feel safe,” Foley’s son, Michael Foley Jr., told the mourners. “He never would’ve thought he would’ve been worthy of all this.”
Foley, 60, was struck by a bus driven by a colleague as he walked across the parking lot at Santa Rita Jail in the early morning darkness to report for duty on Feb. 22. He died the next day at John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek.
Before his time with the Alameda County Sheriff ’s Office, Foley spent 30 years as an officer with the Concord Police Department.
Bagpipers came from the San Francisco Police Department to play at Foley’s funeral. The Contra Costa County sheriff ’s staff helped to plan and secure the pavilion, while the CHP brought the motorcade, with dozens of motorcycles turning the road leading to the memorial ceremony into a river of blinking blue and red lights.
The pavilion, nestled in green eastern Contra Costa County hills scattered with herds of grazing cows, is just down the road from where Foley went to high school. He met his wife, Tammie, in Concord, too.
Foley was from a law enforcement family — his father, Larry, was an Oakland police sergeant, and his brother, John, is a police officer in Emeryville. And in a way, it was Foley’s career in law enforcement that helped him start a family of his own.
Thirty years ago, as a Concord police officer, he pulled over his future wife for a traffic violation. He wrote her a ticket so he could get her phone number.
He was a family man first and foremost, his son told the crowd.
Michael Foley Jr. read a letter of thanks written by a man named George Garcia whom the elder Foley interacted with when Garcia was behind bars at Santa Rita Jail. Garcia said Foley’s kind treatment of him helped him change from a violent gang member to an honest family man.
Garcia wrote the letter the day after he got married.
“You always looked at me as a human being,” Garcia wrote.
For John Foley it was some comfort knowing that his brother was an organ donor, and that his death would help other people live.
He described the hospital testing of Michael’s organs, which found his heart was good and strong despite his age.
“I received verified scientific evidence that Mike had a good heart,” John Foley said. “But they wasted their time doing those tests. They could’ve asked anybody who knew Mike.”
Foley is survived by his wife, daughter and son.
“Mike, we will not forget,” said Alameda County Sheriff Gregory Ahern. “We already miss you.”
“I don’t think my dad ever realized how many lives he touched, how many people he helped to feel safe.” Michael Foley Jr.
Filipa A. Ioannou is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: fioannou@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @obioannoukenobi