Ground Zero police detective laid to rest

The family of a retired Police Detective Kevin Hawkins believes that the once-strapping cop, who was born and bred in South Ozone Park, died from cancer caused by helping out at Ground Zero.
For two months, Hawkins, 41, worked tirelessly at the site of the Manhattan terrorist attacks, family friends said outside of his full police funeral Mass on Thursday, May 10.
In September 2006, he was diagnosed with kidney cancer, and on Monday, May 7, he died at the hospice unit of Calvary Hospital in the Bronx, leaving behind his wife, Marie, and three children, Nicholas, Stephanie, and Natalie. The family now lives in Rossville, Staten Island.
More than 200 mourners packed Our Lady of Perpetual Help on 115th Street and Linden Boulevard for the funeral, as Mayor Michael Bloomberg and church pastor Fr. Patrick West, who had known Hawkins since the detective was an altar server there, delivered the eulogies.
A former Marine Corps reservist, Hawkins had completed two Gulf War tours and served as part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s security detail since November 2001.
During his speech, Bloomberg said that Hawkins, a 20-year veteran of the police department, had a “voracious appetite for knowledge.”
Once outside of the church, Bloomberg stood alongside Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly as a police department helicopter hovered above the procession, and Hawkins’ youngest daughter, 6-year-old Natalie, clutched a foot-long cross for her father. The detective’s mother, Dottie, sobbed and hugged relatives and friends.
“He [Hawkins] fought this disease with the same integrity and strength that he displayed serving our country and our city, whether it was in the Persian Gulf or at Ground Zero,” Bloomberg said. “On behalf of every New Yorker, our thoughts and prayers are with Kevin’s wife Marie, their children Nicholas, Stephanie, and Natalie, and the rest of his family at this difficult time.”
Hawkins’ family is now seeking verification that his cancer developed from his time spent at Ground Zero, which would make him eligible for a disability pension.