Comfort in an hour of greatest need

Comfort in an hour of greatest need
Chaplain Rick Bulman serves sheriff’s office to assist both the public and emergency responders



DEBBY ABE; Staff writer
Rick Bulman always asks prospective police chaplains if they’ve ever cradled a dead baby or seen people with their heads shot off.

Bulman has. Far too many times.

As the full-time chaplain for the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office, he sees the bodies and emotional wreckage of some of the most heartwrenching deaths in the county.

He gives people the worst news of their lives, and as they collapse in disbelief and grief, he helps them navigate those first few horrible hours.

In 2008, he told Judith Mitchell-Ballard her three young daughters had perished in a fire in Graham.

In 2009, he told Angela Harrison her husband had killed himself. Hours later, he broke the news that all five of her children were dead as well.

Last month, he accompanied the mother of slain Deputy Kent Mundell to memorial ceremonies in Washington, D.C., but returned early to confront another tragedy: 11-year Deputy Allen Myron had fatally shot his in-laws in Gig Harbor before killing himself.

But it did. It took a divorce, multiple jobs, a conversion to Christianity, and finally visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., in 1989 before he realized that he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Failing to deal with the disorder caused him to be a “major jerk” to his first wife and to his current wife, Kathi, during the first decade of their marriage.

“Anger is the only emotion I showed. And control. It’s a subconscious thing, but when you’re not in control, something bad happens. You have to realize also that military and cops basically are taught to react without thinking to any stimulus. If you take time to think, somebody gets hurts or dies.”

Kathi Bulman recalls he was so controlling, she had to ask permission to go to the grocery store. “He would tell me he how embarrassed he was if my purse wasn’t in order,” she said.

Once he began confronting the stress disorder and the couple grew as Christians, she said, their marriage flourished. The Parkland couple have four adult children and 14 grandchildren.

Today, he leads a military veterans support group in Federal Way and serves as the western state coordinator for a veterans group called Point Man Ministries.



Read more: Comfort in an hour of greatest need

Chaplains follow strict code

Lives shaded by grief: The families of slain police officers

Records reveal horrific details of night Pierce County deputy shot in-laws, himself

body of boy found Officials believe he is one of two missing persons

Pierce deputy's motives in killing in-laws remain unclear