In it for the long haul
A father-daughter PBA duo prepares for another momentous Police Unity Tour ride
n BY AMBER RAMUNDO
n PHOTOS BY ED CARATTINI JR.
It was a tough ride. Jillian Sofield hadn’t ridden a bike since she
was 12, but there she was, pedaling the distance from One World
Trade Center to Washington, D.C. Her body ached, and her thighs
were nearly fried, but Jillian knew she couldn’t give up. Even when
she wanted to, she remembered that she wasn’t doing this for her-
self. She was riding for those who died.
That year in particular – 2015 – she was riding the Police Unity
Tour for Scott Hewell, a Stockton, California officer who died in a
vehicle crash. He was only 33 and his parents’ only son.
Hewell was a name that Sofield only knew through scanning the
Officer Down Memorial Page. Yet for the first time, she was expe-
riencing the bond that develops between fallen officers and their
Unity Tour riders on the road to the National Law Enforcement
Officers Memorial (NLEOM) in Washington, D.C. Like the nearly
21,000 other riders who have taken the Tour since 1997, she felt the
empowerment from the name on her wristband and how it kept her
legs moving through the pain.
“I never met the guy a day in my life,” Sofield shared. “But I would
put my life on the line for him.”
She was finally getting immersed in the journey that her father,
Ken Sofield, had been hooked on ever since he first got involved
in the Police Unity Tour in 2004 as a support team member. When
Jillian was sworn in and became a member of Montclair Local 53
in 2014 (the same day as Ken’s retirement from Perth Amboy where
he was a Local 13 member), Ken stressed that 2015 would be the
year that they rode side-by-side into the Memorial. They have made
the Tour three times together, and they will be doing it again this
year as part of the Chapter 37 group that departs each year from the
World Trade Center site.
That first year, it certainly wasn’t side-by-side the entire way.
Though Ken tried to help Jillian prepare for the days of pedal-
ing through the elements, she decided that, aside from her usual
routine at the gym, she’d wing it. Ken, on the other hand, showed
stamina only a rider with years of experience could exude. He of-
ten whizzed by Jillian to ride at the front of the pack, uttering quick
words of encouragement over his shoulder as he passed.
“Having her experience it with me means a lot,” Ken confirmed.
“Jillian was tough. Even when she complained, she never quit.”
Any pain and misery that Jillian felt on the ride dissipated when
she rode into D.C. alongside her father and with the Police Unity
Tour rush of riders that pixilated a blue line around the Memorial.
“It was definitely that overwhelming feeling,” she remembered.
“Here we are, riding into D.C., and you have lines of people stand-
ing, clapping continuously as all of the riders come in. It’s emotion-
al.”
Once they arrived, Ken brought Jillian to see the names on the
wall that represented the honor that he carried each time he rode in
the Tour since 2010. Jillian knew some of the names well: Richie Ro-
driguez, a Port Authority Local 116 member who made the ultimate
sacrifice responding to the 9/11 terror attacks, and Tommy Raji, a
Perth Amboy Local 13 member who was killed in his patrol car by a
drunk driver in 2008. But to stand at the wall tracing the names of
her father’s personal heroes for the first time created an emotion
unlike anything she had ever felt.
Retired Perth Amboy Local 13
member Ken Sofield starts the
Police Unity Tour each year at the
World Trade Center site to honor Jillian Sofield prepares for her third Po-
fallen officer Richard Rodriguez lice Unity Tour since becoming a mem-
who lost his life responding to the ber of Montclair Local 53 in 2014.
9/11 attacks.
Jillian Sofield shares an emotional survivor embrace at the Law Enforcement
Memorial in Washington, D.C. with the 5-year-old son of Madison County,
Tennessee Deputy