Kim Richardson never had much faith in blind dates – or finding the man of her dreams, for that matter. She was about to turn 30 and had almost given up on finding ‘Mr. Right’.

So, when her friends wanted to set her up with a 27-year-old Penetanguishene police officer named Tom Coffin, she flatly refused.

“I had gone on a blind date before and I’d said I would never go on one again,” she laughs. “That’s why I didn’t really want to meet him because you just get too many kooky people.”

But their mutual friends were relentless in the quest to get the pair together. Kim finally called Tom and suggested they meet for coffee rather than dinner so they wouldn’t be stuck on a date they didn’t want to be on. “Just in case I look at you and you look at me and we don’t like each other,” she remembers saying to him.

“I wasn’t looking for a relationship, but we met and, after 10 minutes, we were like, ‘well, let’s go for dinner.’ It was love at first sight,” she explains, smiling. “We were very much in love.”

Little more than a year later, she became Kim Coffin and their first child, Jordyn came along, giving Tom’s daughter Laura a little sister and cementing the relationship that began over a cup of coffee.

Their son, Matthew, was born just over a year after Jordyn.

Fifteen years later, Kim sits amidst a kitchen that is torn apart, ready for renovations that will turn her new home into her dream home. Her teenage kids are at school and her chocolate lab, ‘Duke’, is nearby. She is clearly at peace, happy in a six-year relationship and excited about the future. But there is still sorrow over the man who was ripped from her life on May 31, 1997.

Penetanguishene was rocked from its idyllic slumber in the early morning hours on that date when a man – the chairperson of the police services board, at the time – walked into the Commodore Hotel and shot the off-duty officer who was there with friends.

“Tom never went out with the boys; he was a family man, big time. He wanted to be home early that night because he and the kids were doing something for me the next morning,” Kim remembers.

“So, out the door he went, kiss-kiss goodbye and that was the last time I ever saw him.”

As deeply connected as they were, Kim remembers waking and sitting straight up in bed at 12:35 a.m., about the same time Tom was shot. When she saw that he wasn’t in bed beside her, she fell back asleep, confident he would be home soon.

She was re-awakened a short time later by growls from their golden retriever ‘Buddy’ and soon a friend turned on her bedroom light.

“She said, ‘Kim, you need to get dressed.’ I just said, ‘Where’s Tom?’ I just wanted to know where Tom was because I knew something was seriously wrong. Sure enough, there was a commander standing there with his hat under his arm and I looked at him and I said, ‘Oh my God, you’re going to tell me Tom’s dead.’”

Just as clearly as Kim remembers this moment, Tom’s fellow OPP officers remember when they learned their brother had been murdered.

His longtime colleague, OPP Const. Dave Fawcett, was the second officer to arrive on scene and recalls the sickening realization that his good friend was gone.

“Tommy was really the only close person I know that has been killed in all the time I worked on the job – and I came from Toronto. Tommy was a good friend of mine and yeah, it hurt and it still hurts, to this day,” he says.

Const. Kirk Wood was on the same platoon as Tom and remembers him as a dedicated officer who could be counted on.

“If Tom was your backup, you had no concerns,” says Wood, who was asleep at home when he got the call about Tom. He added, “It was a shocker for everyone. When it’s right in your own house it takes a while to get over … You think about it, probably every day. It’s in the back of your mind; it never goes away.”

The cliché, ‘tall, dark and handsome’ describes Tom’s physical appearance but he was so much more than a dazzling smile and arresting green eyes. A smile spreads over Kim’s face when she describes the man who changed her life.

“He was very generous in spirit. He was very community-minded. He loved kids and he was an awesome father. He made time for people. He made women feel good about themselves – old ladies loved him. You just wanted to get to know him when you met him. When you spoke, he listened; he was that type of person. He loved life and he loved being a police officer.”

Tom joined the Alliston Police Service as an auxiliary officer at the age of 18. When he was 21, he joined the Kirkland Lake Police Service. By 26, he was a police officer with the Penetanguishene Police Service and, when the PPS was amalgamated into the Midland OPP in 1996, he asked to continue working in the Town of Penetanguishene.

What strikes Tom Coffin, Sr. is the profound effect his son had on the people whose lives he touched through policing.

“At his funeral, it really came to light with me. You see people coming in with kids and I’d ask, ‘how did you know my son?’ ‘Oh, he arrested my daughter’ or ‘He arrested my son’ or ‘He arrested me’. ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ I’d say. ‘No, don’t be sorry. He came to our house and he counselled our child.’ He just had a genuine care and concern for people.”

Tom excelled as an officer and often talked about his goal of becoming the OPP’s youngest detective inspector, recounts Fawcett.

“He would have gone far. He was very interested in investigative-type work. He laid a lot of charges. Tommy was always top in every category as far as arrests and charges were concerned.”

The oldest of four children, leadership came naturally to Tom, who always looked out for his younger siblings, Terry, Vicki and Greg. His mom, Diane Coffin, recalls a 12-year-old Tom’s concern that the babysitter she hired for an hour a day to watch his two-year-old brother, Greg, wasn’t doing her job properly.

“Tommy said, ‘Mom, she’s not watching Greg; she’s just watching TV. So, if you pay me, I’ll split it with my brother (Terry, who is a year younger),’” she says, chuckling. “So, I used to pay Tommy $12 a week to watch Greg and Terry $8 a week not to give his brother a hard time, and it worked out fine.”

As committed to others as he was – sharing his love of sports with children and coaching the Junior C Penetang Kings – there was nothing he loved more than golfing with Kim or being with his children who were seven, three and almost two years old when he died.

“I miss those days, I really do,” Kim sighs. “We got so robbed. I don’t know what our life would have been like raising our kids. You never really get over it. It took me a long time to really try and move on.”

However strong her grief, Kim says she made a decision a long time ago that she would not remain angry. She refuses to let the man who took her husband steal her and her children’s lives, as well.

“When it first happened, I was very angry but I changed. I thought, ‘no, he’s not going to make me an angry person,’” Kim says, her voice rising. “You know what? You have to move on.”

Instead, she focuses on the good memories of Tom and says she is pleased that the OPP has also not forgotten him.

On Saturday, May 17 at noon, the OPP is dedicating its newest vessel to Tom, with an official christening ceremony for the Thomas P. Coffin in a community celebration at the Penetanguishene Town Dock. Although it’s an honour usually given to past commissioners, a request was made to Commissioner Julian Fantino, and it was approved in only 12 days.

“We had the opportunity to recognize one of our officers who made the ultimate sacrifice and the request was something the OPP openly welcomed,” notes OPP Const. Peter Leon. “The boat is going to have a very obvious presence on the water. It will form the cornerstone of the Southern Georgian Bay OPP Marine Unit.”

The new boat joins the Tom Coffin Memorial Park in Penetanguishene, as well as the annual Tom Coffin Memorial Golf Tournament in paying tribute to someone who made a difference to so many.

 “(The dedication) will undoubtedly be one of the greatest happenings of our lives,” notes Tom, Sr.

“There is no other constable who has (been honoured in this way) … In every step of the way in this process, for this past 11 years, we have always put one foot forward and carried on and tried to hold our heads high. We are not the people that will go out and beat our chest and say ‘poor us’. We had our son for 32 years … But to see this is just going to be fantastic.”