The late Chicago Police Officer Krystal Rivera’s mother and daughter peeled off black and white checkered tape to reveal Rivera’s name on the Chicago Police Officers Memorial at the Gold Star Families Memorial and Park on the Museum Campus.
They observed the inscription, ran their fingers across it, then hugged each other. Rivera’s name is the 607th name to be displayed on the memorial honoring Chicago police officers who have died in the line of duty.
Rivera, 36, was shot and killed by her partner, Officer Carlos Baker, June 5 during a foot chase into a Chatham apartment that police said was filled with guns and drugs. Two men have been charged in the foot chase, and Baker was stripped of his police powers last month for an unrelated incident.
“Krystal Rivera was more than a uniform,” her mother, Yolanda Rivera, said after the ceremony Wednesday. “She was my heart, my pride, my greatest joy. She lived her life with great courage, integrity and love, always putting others before herself.”
“As her mother, my heart is shattered, but I will forever carry her spirit with me,” she said.
Her 11-year-old daughter, Bella Medina, smiled through tears as others spoke about Rivera. Bella also briefly spoke, sharing how grateful she is for the relationship she had with her mom.
“Me and my mom had a really good connection,” Bella said. “She felt like my best friend, my walking world and my heart. … She loved sports. She loved [the] White Sox, she loved [the] Bears.”
When Rivera left for work June 5, she hugged Bella extra tight and told her, “‘If anything happens, I’m always right here,’ in my heart,” Bella said a day after the shooting.
Yolanda Rivera said Bella is a living piece of Rivera’s legacy, describing Rivera as brave, compassionate and full of love, and promising that Bella “grows up knowing the kind of human her mother was.”
Rivera had been an officer for four years and she was assigned to the Gresham District.
Directing his comments to Rivera’s family at Wednesday’s ceremony, which also included Rivera’s sisters, Jacqueline and Yasmin Rivera, and her stepfather, Rico Thompson, Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling said the department will never forget her name and the sacrifice she gave to the city.
“Please remember that we know, and we still know, what a great human being she was — is. Those things that she did for our city is an example of what greatness is and what we want our officers to be,” Snelling said, as a bagpiper slowly began playing.
Later Wednesday, the Chicago Police Memorial Foundation held a vigil at the Gold Star Families Memorial and Park and read the names of the Chicago police officers who have died in the line of duty.