Hero's Legacy Lives On Through Sister, Dog Park In His Honor

HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY — As the country observes National Heroes Day on Monday, the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office is paying tribute to a deputy who lost his life while saving another. His legacy now lives on in his sister and a park dedicated in his honor.

John Kotfila Jr., 30, had worked in the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office motor unit for six years. He followed a family legacy of law enforcement that included his father, Massachusetts State Police Sgt. John R. Kotfila, his brother, Officer Michael Kotfila of the Plymouth Police Department in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and both grandfathers.

On March 12, 2016, at 3 a.m., he had just finished an accident investigation and was headed back to the station when the sheriff's office received a 911 call. There was a drunken driver heading in the wrong direction on the Selmon Expressway near the Brandon Expressway.

Sarah Geren said she panicked when she saw the headlights heading straight toward her on the Selmon Expressway during the early-morning hours. She was bracing for the collision when Kotfila came out of nowhere. He pulled his cruiser in front of Geren's car at the last minute to shield her from the head-on crash.

The wrong-way driver hit Kotfila's sheriff's cruiser head-on. Kotfila was transported to Tampa General Hospital, where he later died.

"He saved my life," Geren told members of the news media. "If this deputy had not made a split-second decision to pull around me, that would have been me dying."

Although she was raised in a law enforcement family, Kotfila's sister, Katelyn Kotfila, said it was her brother's sacrifice rather than family tradition that inspired her to drop her plans to join the U.S. Coast Guard. In October 2016, she moved to Tampa from her hometown of Falmouth, Massachusetts, and applied to become a Hillsborough County sheriff's deputy.

Kotfila said the idea of joining the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office motor unit was sparked at her brother’s funeral during a heartwarming conversation with the deputies who'd worked with her brother.

"Three motor guys came up to me, and I had never met them before,” Kotfila said. “They told me that I still have brothers down here, even though I had just lost mine.”

She said she knew she wanted to bring that same level of comfort to other families.

“After my brother died, it gave me a sense of purpose to come down here,” Kotfila said.

In June 2017, Deputy Katelyn Kotfila was sworn in and began working in the sheriff's office patrol division. In July, she finished training for the sheriff's motor unit.

Today, Katelyn works to keep her brother’s legacy alive by patrolling the same streets he watched over in District IV and working alongside the guys who promised at her brother's funeral that they would be her brothers

Among them is Master Deputy Donnie Rizer.

“From about the second day of (motor) school, I knew we had done a wonderful thing by talking her into coming,” Rizer said.

“We can all go to sleep at night knowing there are deputies like John and Katelyn doing what they swore to do,” said Sheriff Chad Chronister. “I want to say thank you to our deputies for wearing your badges with pride and always putting your community first.”

After learning that Deputy John Kotfila shared a strong bond with his German shepherd, Dexter, the Tampa Hillsborough County Expressway Authority decided to turn a vacant space beneath the expressway where he died into a dog park in Kotfila's honor.

The Deputy Kotfila Memorial Dog Park, at 705 Raymond St., Tampa, now makes use of an area that was once considered unusable.

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