AUBURN — Sgt. Jim Robicheau walked out of the Auburn Police Department for the last time as an officer Thursday to a pack of patrol cars and a blaze of flashing blue lights.

One by one, he shook hands with the remaining officers on duty, and then gave each a hug. As he walked from squad car to squad car, he dabbed at his eyes with a T-shirt slung over his shoulder.

“It’s hard to leave,” Robicheau said. “They’re all good people.”

After 25 years with the Auburn police, Robicheau retired Thursday, leaving the department short an officer that one colleague described as “the quiet backbone of the patrol division.”

“When I was a patrol officer a shift did not go by when a parent or a child did not ask me if Officer Robicheau was working,” Chief Phil Crowell wrote in an email. “Throughout his years of service he was dedicated to resolving family conflicts. He has been a mentor to many officers throughout the years and many young people have had an impact on their lives because of Jim’s service.”

Praise for Robicheau came from nearly everyone in the Auburn department. “He’s the type of guy that takes his job very seriously,” Lt. Rick Coron said Friday.

Coron recalled a family that once lived near the police station, and didn’t have a lot of extra money. Robicheau would take the family’s boy fishing, and would buy pizza for their twin daughters. “He did all these things above and beyond the call of duty,” Coron said. “He made friends with everybody and everybody was friends with him, especially the elderly and the deprived. He helped who he could.”

With a friendly face and a serene demeanor, Robicheau was often called upon to defuse tense situations, fellow officers said. “He calms any situation just by being there,” Officer Scott Laliberte said. “I’ve seen people thank him for giving them tickets.”

Alongside looking out for fellow members of the community, Robicheau founded the Auburn Police Department’s dive team. Originally, the team worked in tandem with the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office team. When his partner from the county team, David Rancourt, died of a heart attack suffered during a search dive in the Androscoggin River, Robicheau largely took up the reins, Coron said. In memory of his fallen partner, Robicheau got a tattoo of an oxygen tank with Rancourt’s name next to it.

Later, when the county cut its team for financial reasons, Auburn kept theirs but needed a master diver.

Robicheau volunteered, and he paid for his own diving classes to get the certification as fast as possible, Coron said.

Robicheau’s dedication to the department and the dive team doesn’t seem likely to end with his retirement. He’ll continue to be an active civilian member of the dive team. Above the dive tank tattoo, he plans to get one that reads, “I survived the thin blue line,” written in script.

As Robicheau got into the police cruiser for his final official ride, he turned to the officers who had gathered to bid him goodbye and repeated his motto one last time: “Everybody make it home safe.”

“It’s going to be very different” without him at the department, said Becky Lacasse, a records division employee who met Robicheau in middle school and has known him ever since. “He’s got the biggest heart there is.”

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