For most of his 22 years on the Denver police force, James Szadaj kept watch from his motorcycle over the shoppers and merchants on the 16th Street Mall.
He saved a couple of lives and won some commendations, but his work went mostly unnoticed by the thousands of people who passed him by each day on the mall.
His peers, however, noticed.
“He was a great cop,” Chief Gerry Whitman said Wednesday. “He was a nice guy with a big heart. . . . He loved what he was doing.”
Szadaj (pronounced shu-die) died last week, just days after his 55th birthday, after a long bout with stomach cancer. His wife, Geraldine; his two sons, Brian and Daniel; and his sisters, Betsy and Kathy, were at his side.
On Wednesday, more than 200 people attended Szadaj’s memorial service, including as many as 80 of his uniformed peers who pushed his sparkling police motorcycle into the front of the chapel, next to his ashes and helmet.
After the service, they loaded the motorcycle onto a trailer for the funeral procession out to Olinger Crown Hill Cemetery in Wheat Ridge. His ashes and personal items traveled in a special hearse made of a small trailer pulled behind a motorcycle.
As one of the original members of the mall unit, Szadaj received more than his share of awards, including two Distinguished Service Medals. He also received two Life Saving Medals for preventing a suicide and rescuing a person suffering from diabetic shock.
“He was incredible,” said motorcycle officer Lisa Aitken-Nelson, his partner in the mall unit. “We called him ‘Dad.’ He was the father of our unit.”
His other police duties included providing security for Pope John Paul II during his visit to Denver in 1993 and for the leaders of the industrialized world during the G8 summit here in 1997.
Szadaj was an avid reader, an accomplished woodworker who built numerous pieces of furniture, and a maker of ship, tank and airplane models.
He also developed a love for the culture and history of Japan after 16 years ago marrying his wife, who is of Japanese heritage. Szadaj in 2000 took his family to Japan, where they visited her family and toured throughout the islands.
His father-in-law, Tom Koshio, delivered a moving farewell to Szadaj, paying tribute to his daughter for the selfless care of her dying husband.
He also praised Szadaj’s fellow officers, telling them that their caring “really touched all of us in his family.”
“He was a delight,” Koshio said. “He was a great addition to our family.”
Koshio told how police and family had made special plans for Szadaj to spend July Fourth on the aircraft carrier USS Midway in the San Diego harbor. Police officers even arranged for Szadaj to take a helicopter tour onto the carrier’s deck.
But he suffered a setback as they arrived July 3, and he spent a week in the hospital there.
He never saw the ship.
Mike McPhee: 303-954-1409 or mmcphee@denverpost.com
