Candlelight Vigil
From right, Megan, Toni and Dylan Vidro attend the Candlelight Vigil during National Police
Week. On their wrists were bracelets they received from offi cers who rode the Police Unity Tour
in honor of Christopher Vidro.
Made of Honor
Tribute to Montclair State Campus Police Offi cer Christopher Vidro
is longtime coming but worth the wait
■ BY MITCHELL KRUGEL
■ PHOTOS BY AMBER RAMUNDO
The honor of remembrance that filled National Police Week
2018 beamed with every smile from Dylan Vidro. Certainly there
will always be pain for Dylan, his mother Toni and younger sis-
ter Megan over losing their father and husband, Montclair State
University Campus Police Sergeant and State Campus Police
Local 278 member Christopher Vidro to cancer that resulted
from his response to 9/11.
But when his name was finally called during the Candlelight
Vigil 11 years after Chris passed from multiple myeloma, an ag-
gressive form of cancer resulting from his exposure to toxins on
9/11, 14-year-old Dylan saw the mesmerizing honor of a broth-
erhood that some day he might like to join.
“Considering the sacrifice he made, and the fact of what he
was willing to do for others, I think this is amazing,” proclaimed
54
NEW JERSEY COPS
■ JUNE 2018
Dylan, sitting alongside his mother and sister at the National
Mall in Washington D.C. just as the Vigil was about to com-
mence.
The power of remembrance that makes National Police Week
so magnetic also seemed to permeate the Vidro family, as well
as the detail from the MSU Police Department that came to es-
cort them to all the week’s events. As Toni thought about that
morning when Chris was the last responder to cross the bridge
following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center – how
much he loved coming to Police Week – it wasn’t hard to feel
Christopher’s presence.
“Well, just by that this is happening to us, his name finally
being added to the Memorial and he was finally recognized, I
think that was him working hard for us as well,” Dylan added.
Dylan and Megan have honored their father for their entire
lives. Dylan had just been born when Christopher first got sick
in 2002. Megan was born three weeks before he passed. And so