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“Great guy, great heart,” she explained. “Always had words of encouragement. If you were down, he always had the right mes- sage.”
At any rate, Ganczewski looked up from her post at the mar- athon and Marmalade came running by. He stopped to take a selfie with her and Smith. Check out the big smile on his face.
“That man never stopped smiling,” Ganczewski asserted. “He made other people smile. Even if you were having a bad day, he would come up to you and say, ‘Are you OK?’ A couple of times...I have a child who has epilepsy...he would come up to me...”
Tears kept Ganczewski from finishing her thought. But then a smile quickly wiped away the tears. It was hard not to be upbeat being around Lalo. Or thinking about him.

At Marmolejo’s funeral Mass, Father Dan Brandt related how Lalo needed five hours to complete that first marathon. But if he hadn’t stopped to talk to everybody he knew along the way, he might have made it in three hours.
Simply completing the marathon – actually, simply running it – accentuated Becca’s message. He ran with Maria, and when they finished, he told her he would never run the marathon again. But always searching for the next mountain to climb, he signed up to run next year.
The mountain before that was to be pursuing another degree to add to the Associate in Arts degree in Criminal Justice that he earned from Moraine Valley Community College. Marmolejo wanted that to climb the ranks of the Department, which those who worked with him in 005 reckoned he would soon.
He first showed that desire to strive for much more and to push others at the academy. He was known to push his class- mates to complete their 5 a.m. runs and motivate them to pass their power test runs.
“Eddie was the person you could count on because you knew he would never let you down. He wanted the best for others,” Lizarzaburo cherished. “He was more than just a classmate to us. He was a mentor, a motivator and our big brother. Many of us called him ‘Sarge’ because he was always striving for us to do better. He always gave us good advice, and he knew how to lift your spirits when he saw you were down.”

After being sworn in on April 25, 2016, Marmolejo quickly made his mark on the Department and displayed the ambition that would eventually lead him and partner Conrad Gary up the hill on to the Metra tracks the night of Dec. 17. He had been rec- ognized with four internal honorable mention awards, a physi- cal fitness award and a Department commendation. He showed the propensity to handle any assignment with aplomb, includ- ing working the radio room, transport and the lock-up. Because he was good with people, 005 liked having him on the desk.
But Marmolejo did not want to be a house mouse. He was so good with people that he wanted to be on the street. He was al- ready on the list to work plainclothes, and the word around 005 was that he would be on a tactical team before long.
Marmolejo didn’t just show a knack for being the police; he lived to be a public servant. He developed an aspiration to serve working at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, start- ing out transporting patients and drawing blood and ascending to become an ER technician. Apparently, he wanted a life of self-
38 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ JANUARY 2019
Our condolences to the family and friends of Officers Conrad Gary and Eduardo Marmolejo
J. Harris Academy of Police Training Jim Harris, Allen Bloodgood and Phil Rizzo