Memorial Wall: Bill Kay

As a longtime volunteer at the San Rafael Police Department, Bill Kay lent a hand in the Investigation’s unit nearly every Tuesday for 28 years. Bill’s family fled Poland and then the Soviet Union ahead of Nazi invasions in World War II, and he lived various places before arriving in San Rafael in 1963. As an aide in the Investigation’s unit, he started with tasks such as reviewing pawn shop records and following up on bad checks. Eventually he came to specialize in maintaining records on sex offenders and chasing leads on missing person’s cases. Lt. Ralph Pata described Kay’s contribution as “huge,” saying he spared investigators hundreds of hours of labor. Lt. Pata said Kay was also the steady voice people would hear on the phone when they were reporting their missing loved ones, some of whom were suicidal, were seniors, or were mentally ill residents who had wandered away from home. Bill was a tremendous asset to the City and Police Department.