Hundreds gather to honor late Undersheriff Bill Blake

In a larger-than-life story befitting his character, friends of Bill Blake say he once saved a woman from a kidnapping by shooting out the tires of the limousine speeding away with her – firing with a shotgun as he sped after them from behind the wheel of his patrol car.

“He was driving in pursuit, rolled down the window, and put the shotgun out and stopped it right there on (Interstate 5),” Sheriff Vern Warnke said.

The limousine rolled off the roadway, landed on its roof and the woman was saved, friends and family recalled.

The recollection of the rescue in the late 1970s was just one of many stories shared Friday during a memorial service held in honor of Blake, who spent nearly four decades with the Merced County Sheriff’s Office.

Blake, 65, died Jan. 10 at Doctors Medical Center in Modesto after battling an illness family members have described as “brief but serious.”

Hundreds packed the seats at Gateway Community Church on a rainy Friday morning to pay their respects to a man whose legacy of 38 years of service looms large in the community he served.

Blake, a native of Merced, joined the Sheriff’s Office in 1971 and retired in 2009 as undersheriff. He was elected to the Merced City Council the year he retired. He stepped down from the council in 2013.

Blake is survived by his daughter, Tiffany Oliver; sons, Billy Blake and Kevin Blake; and grandchildren Grace and Kate Oliver, and Faith, Parker and “Baby Kevin” Blake.

Blake’s son Kevin, who followed in his father’s footsteps as a sheriff’s deputy and a city councilman, eulogized his dad, painting a picture of a man who was equal parts action hero, gifted leader, and devoted father and grandfather.

The sometimes stern, serious and imposing father once took his teenage daughter and her friends to a New Kids on the Block concert, Kevin Blake recalled. At one point, he also led his daughter’s Brownie troop.

Bill Blake was also a colorful, funny character in many of his family’s favorite stories. He and his best friend once were kicked out of an all-you-can-eat buffet for eating too much.

And while he would’ve been unlikely to describe himself as a hero, his friends and colleagues said the description fit him perfectly.

Former Sheriff Tom Cavallero said Blake was instrumental in developing the Sheriff’s Office dive team and personally led many water rescues.

“He was famous for getting to the scene first and getting into the water before anyone else,” Cavallero said. “He definitely led from the front.”

Kevin Blake shared a story from his own early days as a deputy that he said captured his father’s character and his influence on others.

“About 15 years ago, I was a new deputy working in the South Dos Palos area when, around midnight or 1 a.m., I encountered a man on the street,” Kevin Blake recalled.

Kevin Blake stopped the man and quickly learned he had a long arrest record and was hostile to law enforcement.

The man was “aggressive, adversarial and very anti-law enforcement” until he saw Kevin Blake’s name tag. When the man learned Bill Blake was Kevin’s father, his demeanor “abruptly changed.”

“And, all of the sudden, he was very nice and quite pleasant to me,” he said.

Then, the man said something about Bill Blake that Kevin will never forget.

“That one parolee at 1 o’clock in the morning 15 years ago in South Dos Palos summed up my dad’s life in five words,” he said, “and probably better than anyone else could.”

The man, he recalled, said: “Your father did it right.”

This story was originally published January 22, 2016 at 5:57 PM with the headline "Hundreds gather to honor late Undersheriff Bill Blake."