Before he became a cop, Garrett Swasey was a champion figure skater.
The police officer killed in Friday’s shootout at a Planned Parenthood clinic was a devoted father, church leader and a former champion figure skater who dreamed of being an Olympian.
INSIDE EDITION spoke to Garrett Swasey’s former skating partner, Christine Fowler-Binder, outside a Los Angeles ice rink where she now teaches.
“He died doing what he loved,” said Fowler-Binder, who won the junior national skating championship with Swasey in 1992.
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Accused shooter Robert Lewis Dear appeared in court Monday and was ordered held without bail.
Swasey moved to Colorado as a high school student from Massachusetts to train as an ice skater. Though he became nationally ranked, Swasey never realized his dream to compete in the Olympics.
He was childhood friends with Silver Medal Olympian Nancy Kerrigan, who called his death a tragedy and said that Swasey was “a true friend – very caring, very loving.”
The 44-year-old had been a University of Colorado at Colorado Springs police officer for six years. He also was an elder at Hope Chapel, where worshippers mourned him Sunday in a tear-filled service.
“His greatest joys were his family, his church and his profession. Helping others brought him a deep satisfaction and being a police officer was a part of him,” his family said in a statement.
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Garrett and his wife, Rachel, had two children, Faith, six, and Elijah, who turned 11 on Sunday.
A crowd-funding account set up for Swasey’s family has taken in more than $100,000.
He was shot to death after responding to an active shooter call from the Planned Parenthood office in Colorado Springs. He was on duty at the university campus and went to help police responding at the scene.
Two others died in the shootout: Jenniver Markovsky, a mother of two, and Ke’Arre Stewart, a father and Army veteran who served in Iraq.
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