An organization aiming to help police officers who have been seriously injured or disabled in the line of duty is hoping to build support through a weekend extravaganza in Lake Oswego.
Wounded Blue will host Light up the Lake featuring a VIP event and a public celebration the weekend of July 27-28.
The VIP event, which costs $1,000 to attend and has a maximum capacity of 100 people, will include a performance from country singer Nate Botsford and a dinner cooked by Zeph Shepard of Proletariat Butchery. It will occur from 5-9 p.m. Saturday, July 27 at a local resident’s home.
The public event will feature food trucks, photo booth, door prizes, a raffle and music by rock band StimPak and take place from 4-8 p.m. Sunday, July 28 at Millennium Plaza Park.
Randy Sutton founded Wounded Blue after serving as a police officer for 34 years. He retired due to a stroke he endured while on duty and said that his agency, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, refused to pay any benefits or medical bills. He fought the department in court and won. He said having to go to court against a department he served with for so long was shocking and debilitating.
However, his struggle and the realization that cops across the country were fighting similar situations inspired him to start an organization to help disabled or injured officers navigate such challenges.
Sutton, who played a cop in the movie “Casino” and other films (he also appeared in the show “Cops”), said many officers from across the country reached out to him when they learned about his court battle.
“All of these heartbreaking conversations ended with ‘I feel abandoned and alone.’ I realized this is a national issue,” Sutton said.
The idea for this event derived from Sutton and Lake Oswego residents Joanne Kantor and Kim Frankel, another former cop who became permanently disabled in the line of duty.
“To see the challenges she has gone through along with my new son-in-law who is a member of the Lake Oswego Police Department got my husband and I thinking, ‘God forbid anything happen to him,’” Kantor said of Frankel. “We learned this is happening to police officers across the country. They are not getting the help they need when they are wounded or disabled.”
Some of the goals of the event, Kantor said, are to educate people about the organization, raise money to send officers to camps for wounded officers and to garner momentum toward establishing a Wounded Blue chapter in every state including Oregon.
“Showing your police that the community cares is an essential part of keeping them healthy emotionally and psychologically as well as physically. I am so appreciative of Joanne Kantor and the community up there in Lake Oswego for putting this event on and I believe it is going to be tremendously successful,” Sutton said.
Along with the Light Up the Lake events, there also is an associated online charity auction featuring Taylor Swift autographed guitars, an Alaska Gold Expedition with Discovery Channel’s Hoffman Family, training session with Olympic Wrestler and Ultimate Champion Hendo Henderson and more.
For more information on the event, visit https://thewoundedblue.ejoinme.org/WBLLHome24.
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