Maher saluted: 'He's a legend'

The bagpipes began mourning about five minutes past one, and everyone stood a little straighter and remained a little quieter. The pallbearers brought in the casket, draped in an American flag, as hundreds of police officers stood in salute, immaculate in their white gloves and shined shoes.

Yesterday, approximately 3,000 people, mostly from law enforcement, congregated at the Christian Faith Center in Des Moines to honor Federal Way police Officer Patrick Martin Maher, who was shot dead with his own gun Saturday after breaking up a fight between two brothers.

"I wish the public could learn more about these guys while they are still serving," said William Mari, 17, a Snoqualmie teen volunteering at the service as an usher. "And not just at funerals."

Mike Gildea, a special agent for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) from New York, set the tone for a sometimes uplifting event, when he explained in great detail and with a thick Brooklyn accent how he worked with Maher in the early 1990s on a huge drug bust in New Jersey.

Maher, Gildea said, "was the kinda guy who was always up before you, always had the coffee ready."

They got to know each other well over the next four years, and spent a lot of time inside a cramped DEA-issued Corvette, plotting nautical information, figuring out theories and doing surveillance. Maher kept his meticulous notes inside an 8 x 10 cardboard box.

"In his other life, in his blue jeans, his flip-flops, his ever-present tan, he's a legend in the Coast Guard," Gildea said.

Maher worked for only seven months in Federal Way. Before that, he worked for seven years for the Honolulu Police Department. Many of his colleagues there flew in for the service and draped leis over a large picture of Maher.

Stories of Maher's casual, friendly and humble nature came from his wife, Renee, who talked about how they met in Hawaii.

She said her husband was a man of simple tastes, who liked to laugh and sometimes made restaurant reservations under the name of actor Harrison Ford, whom he resembled.

"He would say, 'Look at these comfortable booths, and the selection of syrups,' " she said. "It was kind of an addiction."

Renee Maher, a former prosecutor, said she knew it was a special relationship when even the working girls in Waikiki, who Maher often busted while patrolling the vice beat, told her in the courtrooms that he was a respectful man.

"From the bottom of my heart, when you remember Patrick, do it with a smile on your face, a full heart and joy in your soul," she said.

Maher's eldest son, Nathan, 26, read a letter he had written his father. Maher's older sister, Teresa, who officiated the memorial, said she grappled for a long time with the huge spiritual questions:

"Why my husband? Why my father? Why my brother? Why my colleague? Why this man? Why now?" she said. "Nothing will ever be able to fill that pain."

Federal Way Police Officer James Nelson, who worked on the same squad with Maher, said, "There's no what-ifs. We can drown ourselves in that ... God wanted him back."

Among those in the audience, Tom Sawyer, a 40-year-old Vancouver, Wash., police officer, said, "When I go home, I want to hug my kids, buy ice cream cones for them. These things help figure out the priorities in my life."

Jason Scott Roberts, the 28-year-old man accused of shooting Maher, was charged earlier this week with aggravated first-degree murder.

Michael Ko: 206-515-5653 or mko@seattletimes.com