By Marine Patrol Sergeant Bobby Randazzo
Wow, it has been almost 12 years since the City of Sunny Isles Beach Police Department was incorporated back in August of 1998. At that time, including the command staff, we were a compliment of 26 officers. It seems like yesterday. Many things have changed and many have remained the same. One thing that has stayed the same is the generosity and sensitivity of our fellow officers, the City of Sunny Isles Beach and our Department.
Officer Kim (Bowerman) Villere was one of those first 26 officers hired in Sunny Isles Beach. She started her career in South Bend, Indiana in 1992 as a patrol officer and when she left she was assigned as a narcotics officer. If you knew Kim, you couldn’t forget her beautiful smile, her quest to help the less fortunate and her zeal for police work. She served proudly in Sunny Isles Beach as a patrol officer, as our first bike patrol officer, and was later promoted to rank of Corporal. As a member of the Sunny Isles Beach Honor Guard Unit, Kim met her husband, Bobby, who was a police officer for St. Charles Parish Sheriffs Office. She was attending the National Police Week Convention in Washington, DC.
Unfortunately, life dealt Kim a blow with a fierce battle against breast cancer. It was a long hard battle for a young brave officer. Some of Kim’s most favorable memories are of the men and women of the Sunny Isles Beach Police Department and how we pulled together in her plight. On December 29, 2009, some ten years after she resigned from the Sunny Isles Beach Police Department, Kim sent a beautiful, hand written card, to all her colleagues expressing her gratitude for the things that were done for her. Small things like being at her side when she called her parents in Indiana to tell them she had breast cancer, driving her to her many biopsy appointments, lending her comfortable shirts to wear after her surgery, bringing her chocolate cakes shaped like a gun, and making lasagna dinners. Big things like donating sick time so she didn’t have to go without a pay check, giving her cash to pay her bills and the most importantly, we paid to have her parents flown from South Bend, Indiana to her bedside in Florida.
It is now just over ten years and I am happy to say that Kim is cancer free. She retired as a police office and is saving the world as a seventh grade Language Arts teacher back in South Bend, Indiana. She recently went back to school herself and passed the principal’s licensure exam and will be striking fear and terror into the hearts of children as an assistant principle. Her next challenge will be her Ph. D. and I am confident she will achieve it in record time. Kim is a huge advocate for breast cancer awareness and volunteer with the American Cancer Society. She participates in the Relay for Life, the Race for the Cure, and the Making Strides Walk.
Kim considers herself blessed to have all of us come into her life as friends and to remain as her extended family. Let’s hear it for Officer Bowerman/Villere she is now cancer free for ten years. I am glad to report that the same brotherhood and camaraderie still exists in the Sunny Isles Beach Police Department. Good luck Kim.
