AUSTIN, Texas — The death of Austin police officer Jorge Pastore brought collective grief to the city. Pastore, a 38-year-old SWAT team member killed while trying to save injured hostages in a home, was the first officer to lose his life in a line-of-duty shooting in a decade.
For the first time since his death, his widow, Kim Pastore, is speaking publicly and sharing her journey of grief and resilience exclusively with KVUE Senior Reporter Tony Plohetski. She said she wants to improve policing and the relationship between the community and law enforcement through her husband's death.
Kim Pastore has vivid memories of the last time she saw her husband and when she received the news he had been killed.
“He left that morning, and it was so surprising when they knocked on my door because it was so soon after he left,” Kim Pastore said.
It was a Saturday morning before dawn when she got the visit no police officer’s spouse ever wants.
“I still wake up every morning to that same pounding in my heart hearing that knock on the door,” she explained.
In the four years before that day, she had been watching and cheering as her husband, Jorge Pastore, lived out his dream of a career helping others.
“He’s going to be that guy who is the first one in,” Kim Pastore said. “He can’t help himself. If someone needs help opening a door, or he sees a lady way across the street who is trying to pick something up … And I’m like, 'There he goes. He is going to go help her.'"
The Pastores met almost two decades earlier. Jorge Pastore taught Kim Pastore's sons karate in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, before entering public service as a firefighter and medic.
While visiting friends in Austin over the years, Kim Pastore said her husband knew he wanted to join the Austin Police Department’s SWAT Team. So, the couple left Florida and moved to Texas so he could pursue his dream.
That dream came true just four years after he joined APD.
Jorge Pastore graduated from the Austin Police Academy in 2019. He became immersed in police training and studying police tactics and was soon assigned to APD’s SWAT team.
“I never worried about SWAT,” Kim Pastore explained. “He was with the best of the best, highly trained. Everything is tactically thought through.”
On the morning that changed her life, her husband left their home in western Travis County at around 3 a.m.
“He always kisses me and says, 'See you in a bit.' He never said goodbye, and that was just his thing,” Kim Pastore said.
Police were called to South Austin home where a woman told police a man had stabbed family members inside. The woman was able to escape.
As the SWAT team made entry, a man with a gun opened fire on the officers and they returned fire.
“That no one else was killed was truly a miracle,” Kim Pastore said.
A second officer was shot and injured. Two of the gunman’s family were found dead.
Soon after, Interim Police Chief Robin Henderson went to the Pastore home.
“I opened the door and I saw the chief's face, and she said, 'I’m so sorry,'" Kim Pastore told KVUE. “I think I shut the door, not wanting to believe it."
That November week, Kim Pastore said she slowly absorbed the trauma and grief of her husband's death and embraced the outpouring of support from the community.
“To see there is love out there, there is support – it gave me such hope, and it filled my heart," Kim Pastore said. "I was in shock, honestly.”
Today, she’s keeping her husband's memory alive. Working with the Austin Police Association, she created the Jorge Pastore Foundation.
“It is really what is getting me up now,” she said of her newfound purpose.
The nonprofit aims to help pay for officers to attend specialized training outside of Austin, but Kim Pastore also wants to help build a state-of-the art training facility in her husband’s memory.
“And although he was so well trained when this happened, I think it happened so he could then make more of an impact on people,” she said.
She also hopes that through his name and experience, the organization can work with the community to bridge relationships between police and citizens, which she said is a testament to how her husband lived his life and the legacy he left behind.
“I just want him to be an inspiration for people forever,” Kim Pastore said. “I want people to know about Jorge. He was one in a million.”
In May, Kim Pastore will travel with the APD to Washington, D.C., to honor her husband during National Police Week.
She hopes to have the Jorge Pastore Foundation fully in place in coming weeks.