ORANGE BEACH, AL – The mood at the annual Orange Beach Employee Appreciation Day lunch was somber Wednesday.

One of those employees, Police Investigator Mike Stockwell, was looking forward to starting a new job on Oct. 1, one of training officer for the Orange Beach Police Department.

Stockwell, was killed in a traffic accident late Tuesday night heading home after his shift with the police department. At the luncheon many of his fellow Orange Beach employees were wearing black ribbons.

City flags, and some in residents’ yards, were at half-staff.

Police Chief Billy Wilkins stood at the entrance to the Orange Beach Events Center looking over the gathering of workers sitting down to a free lunch with food supplied by Baumhower’s, Compleat Angler, Flippers and the Southern Grind Coffee Shop.

A subdued Wilkins said the new duties Stockwell was poised to assume were almost a dream job for the veteran officer.

“I was going to give him new full-time duties real, real soon as our full-time training coordinator and range officer which is where his interest really lay,” Wilkins said. “You reach a time in your career where you reach a plateau. He wasn’t really burned out and he was getting reenergized.

“He’d reached that point where he was really enthusiastic about doing things asked of him to do.”

Wilkins said he was saddened because Stockwell was days away from starting that new job he was so excited to be taking over.

“It’s going to be tragic anyway,” Wilkins said of the fatal accident, “but he was started to enjoy coming to work again and that just makes it that much harder.”

Another project Stockwell was instrumental in was restarting a program for citizens to become involved in the police department again through volunteer training.

“I’ve been using him to re-establish our reserve officer program,” Wilkins said. “He’s done a very, very good job with that.”

Stockwell was also heavily involved in a program pushed hard by Mayor Tony Kennon, an anti-drug and alcohol campaign called “It’s Not OK.”

“Mike was a leader, he strapped a gun on and a vest on everyday to protect us and how many of us can say that by going to work,” Kennon said. “Law enforcement is always under appreciated until we lose one and then we realize how important they were to us.

“I know Mike is in good hands. I just hope there are prayers out there for the ones left here who are grieving and hurting because he’s gone.”

Stockwell was divorced and has two teenage daughters. His parents live in Elberta and he has two sisters as well. Stockwell was a 20-year police veteran and had been with the Orange Beach force since March 23, 2004.

He was heading home to Elberta on Tuesday when the accident happened about 9 p.m. at the intersection of the Foley Beach Express and County Road 12.

“We called out our traffic-homicide investigators,” Foley Police Chief David Wilson said. Wilson said the coroner also conducted his own investigation at the accident, which was a two-vehicle wreck.

“The (other) vehicle was damaged, but the person was not injured,” Wilson said.

The cause of the accident remains under investigation.

Onlooker Editor Cathy Higgins contributed to this report.