Fallen Salt Lake officer honored atop peak

How far would you go to honor and remember someone you loved and lost? How far for someone you never knew?

For police officer Keith McPheeters, the answer is at least 17,200 feet upward, to the top of a mountain.

McPheeters, a former Utahn who now lives in Farmington, N.M., founded Cops on Top, an organization of police and public safety officers from across the United States that annually summits some of the world's highest peaks in honor of fallen police officers.

It began in 1998 after the death of Dale Claxton, a Cortez, Colo., police officer whose killers were the subject of a summerlong hunt across the Four Corners. McPheeters and others wanted to find an usual way to remember Claxton and bring awareness to the sacrifices that police officers and their families make daily.

"We were quite certain that Claxton had kissed his wife and family and gone to work not really having any idea that he wasn't coming home that day," said McPheeters, a SWAT officer who spent many weeks looking for the Four Corners fugitives. "We got struck with the idea of 'let's climb some mountain on behalf of these officers.' "

About 50 police officers annually lose their lives in the line of duty. Each year — with the exception of Sept. 11, 2002, when multiple expeditions were simultaneously launched to remember those lost in the 2001 terrorist attacks — Cops on Top selects one officer to honor from nominations made nationwide.

The group made its first summit attempt in 1999, honoring Claxton by climbing Alaska's Mount McKinley, although weather kept them from the top. They returned to McKinley — and made the summit — in 2001, honoring Washington state trooper James Saunders.

In 2004, Cops on Top climbed Mount Aconcagua, the highest peak in Argentina, in memory of James Cawley, the Salt Lake City police officer, Layton resident and Marine reservist who was killed March 29, 2003, while serving in the Iraq war.

"It's amazing that they would choose James," Cawley's elder sister, Julie Cawley Hanson, said. "On the other hand, I'm not surprised."

Cawley's two children wrote letters and drew pictures for their father, which the expedition climbers carried to the top. Hanson has not read the letters but said if they were like those the children wrote on the anniversary of their father's death, they were full of "typical kid stuff": messages of "I played baseball this week," intertwined with "I love you's" and "I miss you's."

During the expedition, someone from the family checked the Cops on Top Web site daily to track the expedition's progress, she said.