GILROY
– A Santa Clara County sheriff’s detective is mourning his
partner today.
Detective Sgt. Dave Gordon, 47, a 19-year veteran of the
sheriff’s office, died Wednesday of a sudden heart attack during
his daily workout at a Bay Area gym.
GILROY – A Santa Clara County sheriff’s detective is mourning his partner today.
Detective Sgt. Dave Gordon, 47, a 19-year veteran of the sheriff’s office, died Wednesday of a sudden heart attack during his daily workout at a Bay Area gym. It was completely unexpected, his partner, Sgt. Dean Baker, said Thursday.
“Dave had no health problems I was aware of,” Baker said Thursday.
Since 2001, Gordon joined Baker in investigating homicide and robbery cases. In South County, the cases they were working to solve included a pair of home-invasion robberies from November outside Morgan Hill and Gilroy and a “mob hit” attempted murder in January 2003 in the Hecker Pass area.
Gordon had previously been a field training officer, teaching deputies fresh out of the academy, and had served on the Sheriff’s Emergency Response Team, equivalent to a SWAT team.
Co-workers Thursday noted Gordon’s professionalism and his devotion to his family and his church.
“I already miss him terribly,” Baker said. “On a personal level, we clicked real well together.”
Baker said he and Gordon were supposed to make investigative trips to Santa Cruz and San Francisco this week. Instead, Baker skipped Santa Cruz and went to San Francisco alone.
Gordon lived in Castro Valley in the East Bay and was an ordained lay minister at a church in Fremont. One of the first things Baker mentioned about his partner was a “deep faith in God,” something Baker shared.
“He loved this work and he was doing it because he felt strongly this is where God wanted him,” Baker said.
