Family Remembers Retired NYPD Officer Killed In Monday Car Crash: ‘She Was Just A Giver’

WANTAGH, NY. — According to her obituary, Elena Crowley was, “the heart of her family.” According to her family, she was even more: A spitfire. A tornado. A giver. A hardass. A mom who was incredibly proud of her two kids. A loving, beloved aunt who treated her nieces and nephews — and their kids — like her own children.

“She just loved,” Crowley’s sister, MaryAnn Mills, said Thursday. “She loved her nieces and nephews, and her grand nieces and nephews. She couldn't do enough for them.”

Crowley died Monday after being hit by a truck while she was waking her dog in Wantagh. She was 53 years-old. Her obituary reads that she’s survived by her husband, Brian, and her children, Sierra and Damien. The youngest of eight siblings, Elena is also survived by her brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews.

In conversations with Patch, members of Crowley’s family recalled that she worked hard to help the people she loved. She chipped in to clean the house after family gatherings, stopped by to help tidy up as she was on her way out to vacation, and bought her grandniece a brand new pair of Ugg boots for her birthday.

“She gave everything…any holiday that we would do, she would call me a million times to make sure everything was perfect. ‘Okay, what are we doing? What am I bringing? What am I doing? Am I doing this? Should I bring this?’ She just needed to make sure everything was great," Mills said.

Elena was 15 years younger than MaryAnn, who had met her future husband Joseph by the time Elena was born.

While he knew Elena for over 50 years of her life, Joseph said it was in recent years that he came to bond with his sister-in-law. As she underwent treatment at his office for a back injury, Joseph said he'd talk to Elena about the future.

“I felt like she was my sister. It’s very loving with her...I've probably seen her 20 times in the last two months,” Joseph said. “We had these great conversations about her future, and what they wanted to do.”

Those plans for the future, Joseph said, included possibly buying a house somewhere warm. Damien is in college at Stanford, while Sierra is pursuing her master's degree at Northeastern. The kids, Elena's family said, were her pride and joy.

"Family meant everything to her, especially her children, Damien and Sierra," Elena's niece, Sasha Micoretti, said.

"It's sad, man, because [Elena] was so proud of her kids...And she should be, but [she was] so proud of them," Joseph said.

While Sierra and Damien were a massive source of pride, they weren't the only kids to whom Elena meant something. After retiring from the NYPD, she became a school security officer in the Roslyn School District.

"From what I understand, the kids there loved her," Joseph said.

On the tribute wall for Crowley, Roslyn School District Assistant Superintendent Michael Goldspiel wrote that Elena, “quickly became a beloved fixture at Roslyn High School—greeting students with a knowing smile at the front desk, ensuring safety in the halls with quiet authority, and earning deep respect from staff, students, and parents alike...The halls feel quieter without her steady presence, the front desk emptier, and the entire building misses the protective spirit she brought every day.”

Talking about her aunt Thursday, Aja Beckmann, 41, described Elena as "the baby" of her mom's generation. With only 12 years between them in age, Aja said she and Elena were naturally close.

“We had a pretty good relationship with her because we were decently close in age. And she was the type of person who was just a giver. She just, if you needed something, she was there to help," Aja said.

For Aja, the defining memory of her aunt as a giver came on her daughter’s birthday. Aja’s daughter, Olive, was born Dec. 27. With the birthday coming two days after Christmas every year, Aja said Elena went above and beyond to make Olive feel celebrated every year.

“Every single Christmas Eve and Christmas, she would reach out to me and she'd be like, ‘Tell me what Olive's favorite flavor cupcakes are. Tell me what kind of icing she wants.’ That is the type of person she was,” Aja said. “And that’s a memory that I won’t forget, and I know that I’ll need to carry on for my daughter...We'll always think about her when we light that candle for Olive's birthday."

In the days after her aunt’s passing, Aja posted a GoFundMe link to help her family with funeral and memorial expenses. In just over 24 hours, the fundraiser had received over 500 donations totaling more than $50,000. By Friday, that number was above $70,000.

For Beckmann, the amount of support that the community showed her family was an indicator not only that her aunt was a special person, but that the communities she touched — in Lynbrook, where she grew up; in Roslyn, where she worked in the schools; and in Wantagh, where she lived and sent her kids to school — had felt her impact too.

“The amount of people that have reached out to all of us about the GoFundMe, and…sending food to the house and doing all this stuff, it's tremendous. I'm trying to think of the right word, but it's just emotional," Beckmann said. "I was even talking to my mom about it this morning, and I was telling her, the fact that so many people, strangers, are just coming forward and they're donating to help out my family, it just shows you that Elena was such a bright light in this world and also shows you that there are really good people in the world, and that's emotional.”