ALAMOSA — Moving back east to be closer to family, Alamosa Police Officer Dana Knauer left a positive mark on the Alamosa community.

Officer Knauer was instrumental in encouraging positive interactions between the community and the Alamosa Police Department through such events as Halloween Fright Fest, Shop With A Cop, Lunch With Law Enforcement and the Department of Human Services carnival.

Due to illness in her family, Knauer decided she needed to leave the San Luis Valley and move back home to Baltimore, Maryland. “It’s time to go home and take care of the family,” she said.

Officer Knauer left on Friday to make the trip back to Maryland, where she was born and raised.

She moved to the San Luis Valley when she was 23. “I have always wanted to live in Colorado,” she said. When a good friend of hers came out to school at Adams State and invited her to visit, Knauer came to Alamosa “and eight years later, here I am.”

Although she originally was on track to become a civil engineer, she decided in her senior year of high school she wanted to become a police officer. She said the brotherhood that existed within the police force was one of the attractions for her.

She graduated from the TSJC Police Academy in 2013 and in May of that year began working for the Alamosa Police Department.

After serving as a patrol officer and detective, she moved into the role of school resource officer last year under a contract between the Alamosa school district and the city.

“I loved it,” she said.

“She was a very big part of community relations,” said Interim Alamosa Police Chief Ken Anderson. He referred to such events as the Fright Fest the department hosts on Halloween and the Shop With A Cop at Christmas.

Knauer said she hopes these programs will continue and grow. “I am confident they will keep growing,” she said.

In addition, Anderson said Officer Knauer assisted with numerous narcotics operations. Earning Crisis Intervention Training (CTI) certification, she also served as one of the crisis negotiators and was a field training officer. She was one of 32 marijuana instructors in the state, providing legal and other updates in the field. She also served as an instructor at the police academy for three years.

“I want to stay in law enforcement,” Knauer said. She may go into probation or parole, she added.

Although looking forward to more time with her 2- and 4-year-old niece and nephew back home in Baltimore, where all her family resides, she said, “I am going to miss these guys.”

She added, “I am going to miss them. These guys were my second family.”

Chief Anderson said the department will miss her as well.

“We will miss Dana,” he said. “We are going to miss her greatly. The schools will miss her. It takes a special individual to be able to work with the kids.”

He will first try to fill her school resource officer position internally and then open the positions for applications if no one within the department is interested.

He added that the way things are today in this country, “I think it’s necessary we have a school resource officer in every school.”

Currently the Alamosa schools have one officer serving the five school buildings from elementary to high school.

Chief Anderson said Officer Knauer was someone who was able to work effectively to keep students safe and interact positively with them, as well as with the community.

“We wish her the best in her future endeavors,” he said. “She’s definitely part of our family.  It’s going to be a hard position for us to fill, to find somebody reliable and dependable. Somebody that’s passionate about that is really what it takes. You have to be passionate about kids and their safety and teaching them about law enforcement.”

Caption: From left are Interim Alamosa Police Chief Ken Anderson, Officer Ryan Veneman, Officer Dana Knauer, Officer Brandon Bertsch and Interim Captain Joey Spangler./Courier photo by Ruth Heide