Honor for Placer County sheriff comes 59 years later
By Gus Thomson, Auburn Journal
Justice is coming for Sheriff William Elam. It just took a little while.
Elam was killed in October 1951 when his car swerved off the a rain-slickened Sierra highway.
He wasn’t the first Placer County Sheriff’s Department officer to die in the line of duty and he wasn’t to be the last.
But somehow, when it came time to place the names of those who had died from the Sheriff’s Department among the 19,000 on the National Peace Officers Memorial, seven were inscribed and Elam’s was left off.
Sgt. Andrew Scott, while researching the history of his 159-year-old department, noticed the discrepancy and there was soon a move within the sheriff’s office to rectify the error.