By Catherine Brakefield
LA View Contributor

METAMORA TWP. — A reserve officer is basically a back-up person. They do not get paid while on duty, yet they perform their tasks as a certified officer.

Timothy Lipka, a master electrician and builder, owns his own business, but he not only performs the duties as a reserve officer; he is a volunteer Lapeer City Fire Department and is a Paramedic with Lapeer EMS in his spare time.

Lipka lives in Oregon Township, just a little north of Metamora, and on the average, he works about 20 to 24 hours a month at the police station. He never expected to receive the dedication plaque for 2006 at Monday’s township meeting, and was surprised to learn that his colleagues had picked him.

“I voted for someone else,” explains Lipka.

Hiking through the woods and swamps searching for a lost child who managed to leave his 6-foot-high fenced playground, Metamora Township Police Officer Art White and Lipka located the boy about three-fourths of a mile from his home.

They then took turns carrying the child safely through swamps and woods in frigid 37-degree temperatures.

Then, on a spring-like May day, Lipka received a call about a man in Hadley. White and Lipka hurried to the scene. The man had stopped breathing; immediately Lipka began performing cardio-pulmonary resusitation , saving the man’s life.

“Right now I just enjoy...” (being a first responder); they’re a great bunch of guys, I like working down there.”

Lipka believes life can’t get much better, he has his two-and-a-half and three-and-a-half year old sons, and he and his wife are very content.

“We do OK, I make an honest living, I don’t expect to get rich, but I’ve got to do this kind of work while I’m young.”

Since Lipka graduated from high school, his sense of dedication and involvement toward his community has grown, you might say, like his ever-increasing love and dedication toward his family.

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