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Family members watch as the Mercer County Sheriff's Office's color guard drapes the American Flag over the casket of Mark Heinl on Dec. 4, 2020, at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Coldwater.
Special tribute will be paid to a veteran local lawman along with eight other peace officers from throughout Ohio who sacrificed their lives between 2020 and 2023.
Mark U. Heinl of Coldwater will be honored at the 36th Ohio Peace Officers Memorial Ceremony at 11 a.m. today at the Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy in London, according to a news release from Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost.
Heinl contracted COVID in late October 2020 and died a month later at 60, two days after Thanksgiving, per Yost's website.
He had retired as a Mercer County Sheriff's Office captain in 2016 but kept busy working as a St. Henry Police Department patrolman, Darke County Sheriff's Office deputy and bus driver for multiple school districts.
His work in law enforcement dated back to his teenage years when he became an Explorer with the Mercer County Sheriff's Office, a Boy Scouts of America-affiliated program that essentially provides law enforcement job shadowing.
In addition to his wife, Sandra, he left behind four adult children, Ashlee Heinl-Botkin, Mark Heinl II, Cassandra Helentjaris and Spencer Heinl; and several grandchildren.
To keep his legacy alive, his family established the Mark Heinl Memorial Law Enforcement Scholarship Fund which provides tuition to one cadet each year to attend Wright State University-Lake Campus Police Academy.
His children in early 2021 recounted to The Daily Standard many incidents in which their father threw himself into harm's way to assist those in difficult situations. For instance, several years ago he and former deputy Chris Hamberg rescued a woman from raging floodwaters after her car was swept off Tama Road into a flooding field east of U.S. 127.
In 1998, he received the Buckeye State Sheriffs' Association Medal of Honor and the Celina Mercer County Chamber Outstanding Achievement Award for saving the woman from drowning, per Yost's website.
Heinl was well-known as a kind, caring man who touched countless lives, according to his children. Perhaps most striking was the respectful and humane way he approached people, including those he arrested while on duty, his children said.
Heinl also volunteered with the Coldwater Fire Department, Coldwater Emergency Medical Service and Mercer County Emergency Response Volunteers and was active in the Knights of St. John and the Maria Stein Country Fest Committee.
Today's ceremony in London will honor the memory of 836 Ohio peace officers who died in the line of duty since 1823, including nine heroes lost in recent years, per the release.
