Page 32 - FOP_Magazine_ February2019

ALL IN THE FAMILY CONTINUED FROM PAGE 31
has a hard time with the wives or husbands not being able to attend every one of their children’s concerts or sporting events, “We try to co-parent together,” Hernandez shares.
The calling is infectious. Janet and Gary Chibicki, whose son Jonathan has been on for 14 years and is currently with the bike patrol, went to one meeting and became hooked on the Auxil- iary. Janet is now the treasurer, and Gary, who keeps a blue light outside his house on 24/7, plays the Easter Bunny at that annual event.
“It promotes a feeling of pride in your family member on the job,” Gary reasons.
Martinez implores family members to join the Auxiliary to be part of the blue family. Give a few hours a couple of times a year
to help provide a blue blanket of comfort. Martinez knows what it has created for her.
“It’s like a safe haven for police officers and their families,” she confirms. “It helps you understand what other families are going through. You’re not the only one going through it. You’re not alone as a significant other.”
The Family that Plays Together
So much of what the Auxiliary does creates one big happy family. The fundraising now creates more than a dozen scholar- ships bestowed annually to children of Lodge 7 members. Much of that funding comes from the annual golf outing the Auxiliary hosts with the Detectives Association each June.
In the 1990s, the Auxiliary would answer the call to do a ben- efit for just about any cause somebody brought to Haynes’ at- tention. She would find a location, muster the members and “It was the easiest thing to do,” she says.
Over the years, the organization has prided itself on one- family-at-a-time support. This has been as easy as providing babysitting or bringing coloring books to a child sitting in an ER waiting for a mother or father who might have been injured on the job. It has led to supplying durable medical equipment-like a motorized tricycle to a handicapped child of an officer-and establishing a trust fund for an officer whose wife died at child- birth while delivering twins.
On a larger scale, the Auxiliary collaborated with the Make- A-Wish Foundation to give gifts to families that achieves one of its priority objectives: “We try to make instant impact,” Pechulis notes.
One child desperately wanted to go fishing, so the organiza- tion supplied a cabin, boat and equipment to send that family on a fishing trip. Several wishes have been granted to children of officers who had never been to Great America.
32 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ FEBRUARY 2019