"An honor:" New Bay Area CHP officer moved to US as refugee when he was 4
The California Highway Patrol recently graduated 133 new troopers from its academy in Sacramento, and nearly 30 of those graduates have now been assigned to the Golden Gate Division.
Sabur Abdulshukur is one of the graduates who will now be patrolling in the Marin area.
"It's an honor. It's not just necessarily a career — It's a calling. You want to help the community, you want to better society," Abdulshukur told CBS News Bay Area.
He recently finished his six-month training at the academy and has been on the job for a few days.
"The academy was great; it was an experience like nothing before. You know, I've done a lot of sports, I've done a lot of clubs, and this was definitely one of the greatest experiences of my life," he said.
Abdulshukur grew up in Sacramento, but his journey to California wasn't easy.
"I was born as a refugee in Tajikistan," he said. "I moved to the United States, specifically to Sacramento, California, around the age of 4."
He had dreamed of pursuing a career as a doctor or engineer, but soon learned that the path wasn't for him.
"I've always had these skillsets where I was always hands-on," Abdulshukur said.
Now, with a fresh uniform, he, along with 27 other new graduates, is ready to get to work.
"No matter if you're in the northernmost or southernmost parts of our state, when you see another CHP officer, you know you've gone through the same thing. You have that camaraderie," CHP Sergeant Andrew Barclay, the public information officer for the Golden Gate Division, told CBS News Bay Area.
He said graduating troopers, like Abdulshukur, are part of a great push to fill job vacancies, partly due to the pandemic, throughout the state.
"Our academy had to shut down for a while. So, that was a period of time where we had officers retiring out, leaving their career, but we weren't backfilling those positions," he said.
In 2023, the agency established a campaign to hire at least 1,000 more officers to their force.
"Just in general, I think all law enforcement agencies right now, there's a huge push for recruitment," he said. "We will constantly be trying to refill the positions that we had vacant, but also refill positions that are becoming vacant, as we see people retiring at the end of their career."
Meanwhile, Abdulshukur is looking forward to working in the Bay Area with his colleagues.
"I'm a very outdoorsy person. I just love Marin, I just love the Golden Gate Division, and that's something I'm so proud and so happy to be a part of," he said.
"Wearing this badge with honor and representing the California Highway Patrol is one of the most honorable things that I can do," Abdulshukur added.
