Officer of the Year: ‘I like catching people’

Veterans group ?honors DeGuilio as ‘law enforcement officer of the year'|

Deputy Sheriff Nick DeGuilio has been named Law Enforcement Officer of the Year by the Bear Flag Post of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. DeGuilio was presented the award at a dinner last Friday night, where Jason Campbell was also recognized as Firefighter of the Year.

The VFW honors first responders as a way to help the community know who they are and how they serve. “It puts a face on people for the public to see who their first responders are,” Dan Parker, post commander said. Honorees then compete at the district and state levels and can potentially be awarded a gold medal in the nationwide program.

DeGuilio, 33, has served in Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office for two-and-a-half years, starting in Santa Rosa and working the last two years at the Sonoma Valley substation on Grove Street. “I’m out looking for bad guys,” DeGuilio said, and he finds them. He made six firearms arrests in 2014, seizing a sawed-off shotgun, a rifle, a shotgun/rifle combo and three handguns.

He was also part of the law enforcement team that cleaned up the gang- and drug-related issues at Larson Park. “Street gangs had claimed it as their own and were camping there down by the creek,” he said, explaining they had moved picnic tables and had set up sheltering tarps and a fire ring. DeGuilio and two other officers went into the park five or six times, making two or three arrests each time, “and that element has gone away now,” he said.

During the past year he also arrested a man in possession of psychedelic mushrooms for sale. A sample of the man’s DNA was taken and it turned out the dealer was linked to an unsolved murder in Santa Rosa that occurred in 2012.

DeGuilio has also been honored twice by Mothers Against Drunk Driving for the high number of DUI arrests he has made.

“Nick embraces the community oriented policing philosophy and works with the community to address problems within their neighborhoods,” Sonoma Police Chief Bret Sackett said in an email. “Nick has great character and integrity, tenaciously pursues the criminal element, and has an intense desire to provide exceptional service to the residents of the Valley.”

“I like my job and I like coming to work,” DeGuilio said. He was born and raised in Napa where his father served as a police officer for 28 years, retiring as sergeant and then going on to teach at the Napa Valley College Criminal Justice Training Center. DeGuilio graduated from Justin-Sienna High School, earned a degree in history at UC Santa Cruz, and returned to Napa and was working in the wine industry, but his heart wasn’t in it.

Two years later, DeGuilio’s younger brother finished college and returned to Napa to attend the police academy where their dad taught. “I decided I wasn’t going to let him have all the fun,” DeGuilio said, and he decided to train at the academy as well.

“I had found my calling. I always had it in the back of mind,” DeGuilio said, and when he completed the training he was hired by the Santa Cruz police department, where he worked for four years. He was thrilled when he got the job in Sonoma so he and his wife, Kati, who he met in high school, could return to the Wine Country and be closer to family. They have two young sons.

He enjoys that his job offers him a different challenge everyday. “It’s always something different,” he said. “Being able to go out there and drive around – it has to be one of the most beautiful places in the world to drive around all day.”

Sackett describes DeGuilio as a highly competent and dedicated officer. “He leads by example and it considered a leader among his peers.

“I like catching people,” DeGuilio said, saying that it is difficult to explain what it feels like. “I don’t know if they think they are not going to get caught, or whether they think they are going to get away with it,” he said. But with DeGuilio patrolling the Valley, the odds of the bad guys getting caught seems to be much greater.

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Editor’s note: A story about Jason Campbell ran in the Jan. 16 edition of the Sonoma Index-Tribune and can be found online at sonomanews.com.

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