Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Students at Raul P. Elizondo Elementary honor school’s namesake

Elizondo Honor Day

Christopher DeVargas

Students and faculty at Raul P. Elizondo Elementary School honor the life of NLVPD Officer Elizondo, Wed. March 16, 2022. Officer Elizondo died in the line of duty in 1995.

Elizondo Honor Day

Students and faculty at Raul P. Elizondo Elementary School honor the life of NLVPD Officer Elizondo, Wed. March 16, 2022. Officer Elizondo died in the line of duty in 1995. Launch slideshow »

In 1995, long before the students at Raul P. Elizondo Elementary School were born, and maybe even before their parents were born, Raul Elizondo, a young officer for the North Las Vegas Police Department, died in the line of duty. 

On the annual Elizondo Honor Day on Wednesday, the children gathered outside their school to honor the campus's namesake in matching T-shirts that read, “Bulldogs honor heroes/past, present, future.”

With a permanent memorial inside the school and a police officer’s uniform on its cartoon dog mascot, the school nods at Elizondo every day.

But once a year, they go all out, all day. They have a flag-raising ceremony, storytimes with officers from multiple local police departments, a parade and a demonstration of police K-9 skills. This year was the 23rd annual Elizondo Day.

The children stood quietly as an honor guard from the North Las Vegas Police Department raised state and U.S. flags to start the day. The loudest sound was the flagpole’s cable slapping against the metal pole.

None of the North Las Vegas officers present in the sizable contingent served alongside Elizondo — not even acting Chief Jackie Gravatt, who joined the department in 2001.

For Gravatt, it’s important to honor officers who came and went before her time. For the children, “I think what the kids understand is the importance of service to community,” she said.

“They know their school is named after an officer that died in the line of duty, that there are people out there that will put themselves before you to make that sacrifice,” she said. “Hopefully what that encourages them to do is to think about the little things around them that they can do to help each other, help out their community, and Officer Elizondo’s ultimate sacrifice in doing so.”

Raul Elizondo was fatally shot on Jan. 30, 1995, during a struggle with a man acting erratically and walking into traffic in the area of Magnet Street, not far from Las Vegas Boulevard North and Civic Center Drive.

The other man got control of Elizondo’s service weapon and shot him between the panels of his protective vest. Elizondo, who was raised in Henderson, was 27 years old.

Elizondo Elementary was built in 1998 in what was then the outskirts of North Las Vegas. It is one of at least three Las Vegas-area schools named for a local first responder who died in the line of duty. 

Others are Marc Kahre Elementary, just north of Summerlin, named for a Metro officer shot by a shooting suspect during a pursuit in 1988, and Kathy L. Batterman Elementary, in the southwest valley, named for a flight nurse who died in a helicopter crash in 1999.