"You are a true American hero"

TROTWOOD, Ohio (WDTN) - To know Officer David Yaney is to know a story about him.

"Unfortunately some of them can't be told today because we're in church," joked retired Trotwood Police Captain Rick Wright.

But from the ones that were told at his funeral at Phillips Temple Church Monday morning you could get a sense of the man who so loved his job that he wanted to wear his Trotwood Police hat to walk his daughter down the aisle.

"The ballcap was not on his head but if you've ever seen an officer with a cap tucked [under an arm] that's where it was," says Pastor John Barnett, who officiated the service.

Yaney was a man who was fearless, whether he was handling snakes.

"When Dave got there he took a look at the snake took a look at [Swafford] and said you're a wimp," Wright says of one story. "Then he went over, got a ladder, set it up, got that snake and yanked it down."

Or whether he was handling expired convenient store sandwiches.

"He would zip up there and pick up those sandwiches they wouldn't sell to anyone else and he would eat them," Wright said of Yaney's ability to eat anything.

Yaney,59, was killed last week when his truck veered off the road, went over a guardrail and crashed into a ravine off Taywood Road in Englewood.

He was on his way to work to do what he had done for more than 30 years, patrol the streets of Trotwood.

"Dave knew early on he wanted to be a police officer," Wright says. "It was in his DNA from birth."

But for all those whose lives he touched while in uniform, his loss will be felt most by those closest to him, his family.

"Superman's cape had nothing on our daddy's Trotwood Police ballcap," Barnett read from a letter written by one of Yaney's daughters.

Of all the words used to describe Yaney, his friends say one stands out.

"It's something very few people in life are called and it's appropriate here and that word is legend," Wright says.

The legend of Officer David Yaney. A story that will be told by those in Trotwood for years to come.

"So long Officer Dave Yaney," Wright says. "You are a true American hero and you have lived a meaningful life. You will be forever remembered and missed."