{"id":32326,"date":"2023-05-21T15:18:01","date_gmt":"2023-05-21T19:18:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=32326"},"modified":"2023-05-21T15:18:06","modified_gmt":"2023-05-21T19:18:06","slug":"what-an-honor-lakeland-5k-honors-fallen-heroes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2023\/05\/21\/what-an-honor-lakeland-5k-honors-fallen-heroes\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018What an honor\u2019: Lakeland 5K honors fallen heroes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nearly 700 people laced up their running shoes Saturday morning to not only support the Lakeland Police Foundation but to honor our fallen heroes.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Jefferson Blizzard finished the 2023 Fallen Heroes Memorial 5K in 25 minutes and 27 seconds at just 10 years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes I finished it,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was really hot and hard.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blizzard said he\u2019s been running since he is 3 years old, but Saturday\u2019s race hit home for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy uncle is in the Marine Corps, and I thought I should honor him,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blizzard wasn\u2019t the only one running in support of our military.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sam Hodgson ran the 5K with his wife and son cheering him on from the sidelines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m in the [Army] reserves right now, but I was active duty,\u201d he explained. \u201cI have two friends who passed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cI have them on my back,\u201d he continued as he turned around to show the back of his t-shirt. \u201cIt\u2019s something to remember them by.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reason behind the race is to raise money for the Lakeland Police Foundation, something Lakeland Police Chief Sam Taylor said helps his officers tremendously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s tremendous to live in a community where 700 folks will come out on a Saturday morning,\u201d he said. \u2018We\u2019ve had people out here since 4:30 a.m.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat an honor it is to see people coming out for this event,\u201d Chief Taylor continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year\u2019s 5K also honored our fallen heroes, like Marine and longtime law enforcement officer Paul Dunn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He died in 2020 <\/a>after crashing his beloved Lakeland police motorcycle on his way to training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Captain Eric Harper of the Lakeland Police Department\u2019s criminal investigations unit knew Dunn for over 25 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe worked on several cases together and have been out with each other on several calls,\u201d Harper explained. \u201cHe was a great person, great officer and great father.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe\u2019s truly missed,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Click here <\/a>to see the race results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nearly 700 people laced up their running shoes Saturday morning to not only support the Lakeland Police Foundation but to honor our fallen heroes. Jefferson Blizzard finished the 2023 Fallen… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32327,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[5073],"class_list":["post-32326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","tag-what-an-honor-lakeland-5k-honors-fallen-heroes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}