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president from day one. “I really believe we can help Chicago Police Officers and their families, and if I didn’t, I would have given this up a long time ago. We support police officers, and we will help in any way we can.”
Family Tree
Had it not been for the “Wagon Men,” there might not be a Family Auxiliary.
The Wagon Men were a unit of CPD officers assigned to move deceased victims of crimes in the City to funeral homes. In the early 1990s, accusations came down that the Wagon Men were selling the bodies, and several of them were suspended without pay pending an investigation.
Dave Haynes was a wagon man who did not get caught up in the investigation. But his wife, Angie, worried about what if it had been them. They had a new baby. “We would have been in a real pickle,” she says.
Angie had been known for her expertise at putting togeth- er events, some of them revolving around Super Bowl Sunday. She put a benefit together for the Wagon Men at the old Piano Man on Clark Street. The event attracted so many officers from across the City that enough money was raised to donate nearly $1,000 to each of the suspended officers. After the event, Lodge 7 President Bill Nolan called Haynes and asked her to start an Auxiliary.
“I said to Bill, ‘What is that?’ I had no clue,” she recalls. “He told me it was police officers’ wives, and being the largest de- partment in the FOP, he thought we should have an auxiliary.”
Dave suggested to Angie that it might be too much work, and that she should consider not doing it. So she promptly called Nolan and told him she would give it a try. They put word out in the Lodge 7 newsletter that the organization was being formed and seeking members. Some of the wives who responded were sworn in with Haynes as president.
“Early on, I met a lot of people who thought it was Auxiliary police,” she adds. “It took a little time for people to swallow it, but we felt like there was a need for it.”
The Auxiliary has been built by and for police families like Jamie Hernandez’s. Her husband, Wilmer, is a CAPS officer in 005. Her father, Tim Murphy, is a detective. Her mother, grand- mother and grandfather are all retired police officers.
When Tim became active in Lodge 7, he wanted his family to follow along. They went to a Family Auxiliary event, and that created an order from police father to police daughter.
“He told me that when I have kids, I need to join,” notes Her- nandez, who is in her first year as the Auxiliary financial secre- tary, after serving as a trustee for several years. “He said, ‘This is your legacy.’ He created a police family. I have a police family. I needed to take a more active role.”
Head of the Family
Much of the success of the Auxiliary has come from following its leader. Haynes’ enthusiasm, energy and commitment are as emblematic as her spiked blonde hair. She lists her phone num- ber – 312-771-0015 – on the Lodge 7 website and everywhere else to be a phone call away for anybody who needs the Auxil- iary’s power.
Her greatest contribution to the organization would be hard to determine. But her favorite – or a fan favorite – might be the cookies she bakes for each of the Auxiliary’s two big events – Lunch with Santa and Lunch with the Easter Bunny. The cookies used to be donated by Maurice Lenell, but when the company went out of business, Haynes took it upon herself to cook up 10 pounds of dough for each event.
“Fireball is the right definition of Angie,” says Charlie Ford, the former president of the Chicago Police Detectives Associ- ation that partners with the Auxiliary on an annual golf outing fundraiser. “We don’t have enough people like her out there.”
Shelley Pechulis, who has been Angie’s wingwoman since the Auxiliary began, believes her dedication comes from the great marriage she has with Dave. According to Pechulis, Haynes wants all Chicago Police Officers and their spouses to have that same support system.
“She gets a genuine joy from this organization trying to build families and bringing everybody together,” Hernandez praises. “And she really enjoys spreading the good name of police offi- cers.”
Family Values
Spreading the news about what runs in the family for police officers initially emerged as the Auxiliary’s calling. Hayne and Pechulis used to conduct a family night for classes of recruits at the academy. Spouses attended as well.
It was an open forum where they would talk about being married to a police officer: what could be a spouse’s hang-ups, understanding the safety of a service revolver and how kids are impacted by having a parent who is the police. They let every- body know that the Auxiliary’s nearly 100 members were people who had walked in their shoes.
“The outreach is the positive thing I see,” Pechulis explains. “At the events, people see what we’re really about, that we’re not just a bunch of women having coffee once a month. It’s an open forum for making connections with other people in the same situation. It’s a focus on how the family is such a huge part of being a Chicago Police Officer.”
Chicago Police Officers can’t have a “Take Their Child to Work Day,” so the Auxiliary allows them to be part of mom or dad’s job. For the spouse who doesn’t come from a police family and
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