Former Philadelphia Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson was an inspector on the force on January 2, 1996, when he got a dreaded call - officer down.
Lauretha Vaird, a 9-year police veteran and mother of two, had been shot while responding to a bank robbery in progress. She died at the scene.
"No matter when it happened, where it happened, no officer should ever be forgotten, the sacrifice that they made," Johnson said.
Now, 14 years later, an effort to see to it she is not forgotten.
"This is a long, long time coming," Sgt. Kimberly Bird, cofounder of the Vaird Foundation, said.
Today, in the Feltonville Boy's and Girl's Club that bears her name, Officer Vaird's life became bigger than her death. Her friends, colleagues, and some who never knew her, drew on her love of children to teach an important lesson that knowledge is power.
"The number one crime prevention tool is a high school diploma. The majority of people who get arrested in Philadelphia have one thing in common, they didn't finish high school, so whatever we can do to keep kids in school, to keep them safe with after school programs, we have to do," Philadelphia District Attorney-Elect Seth Williams.
And so, with a crowd of cops looking on, the teens took on the police on their turf, the basketball court.
It was an effort to prove police are, first and foremost, people.
To many of the kids that play basketball at the club, Officer Vaird's name has long been little more than letters on a sign over the front door. Today that changed.
"It shows that we don't just have to see cops as arresting criminals, we can have fun with them as well," Chris Ramos of Northeast Philadelphia said.
It was a life-changing lesson for both sides of the court.
"It just makes me feel like it wasn't in vain. It makes me feel like it was actually worth something," Officer Vaird's son Michael said.
