City of Federal Way officials last Thursday helped the family of Navy veteran Adam Gutierrez install a memorial bench near the site at which he was senselessly shot and killed in May.

Fully funded by the Gutierrez family, the bench sits at the intersection of Southwest 356th Street and 18th Avenue Southwest. In the center is a plaque that reads, “In loving memory of Adam Edward Gutierrez.”

Gutierrez, 30, was walking his dog in a local neighborhood when he was murdered on May 10. A makeshift vigil has memorialized him for months.

“I’m thankful the city has left it there for so long, since the bench wasn’t there,” said Adam Gutierrez’s widow, Marianne Gutierrez. “But, after reality started setting in, I think we all thought realistically that they’re eventually going to take it down and there’s going to be nothing and it’ll just be like it was before and nothing happened. But something did happen there.”

Adam Gutierrez’s death was the third murder within 48 hours in Federal Way this past May.

“The deaths of Alex Kelley and Frank Cohens Jr. on May 9, and Adam Gutierrez on May 10, had a profound impact on our community,” said Federal Way Police Department Chief Andy Hwang. “The police investigations are very active and our detectives are aggressively pursuing leads in all of the cases.”

While Hwang wouldn’t release details of the case, he said the department is investigating persons of interest in each incident. He added that the leads are strong and the cases “are by no means ‘cold.'”

Federal Way Mayor Jim Ferrell, along with other city officials, paid his respects at around 10 a.m. on Thursday as the bench was installed. He said Adam Gutierrez’s death was a tragic loss that affected the city, and he echoed Hwang’s statement that the department is committed to the investigation.

Marianne Gutierrez said in the months since her husband’s death, the media hype around the unusual, tragic way he died has subsided but she still lives with that pain every day.

“Life is finite,” she said. “We all know this, it’s just – I would hope most people aren’t going through this.”

Marianne Gutierrez, an American Sign Language interpreter, said her job and making plans help her cope.

“When people ask me, I tell them it feels like he’s out on deployment because he was for such a long time, and I’m used to that,” she said. “Sometimes it does feel that way, because he would go out to deployment and I would hang out with his family, and now I’m hanging out with his family and we’re doing family things and he’s not here. Sometimes it feels like he’s going to be back later… not that you forget, it’s just not in the foreground all of the time.”

Just after Adam Gutierrez’s death, a gofundme.com account was set up to help his wife. The crowd-funding web page raised $11,000 – 20 percent of which she and Adam Gutierrez’s mother donated to the Wounded Warrior Project in Adam’s honor.

Adam Gutierrez had planned to run in the Seattle Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon last June, but Marianne Gutierrez’s friend, Colleen McKearney, ran in his name. Next year, Marianne said she will either run the 8K or half marathon. She would also like to put up another memorial bench in front of the University of Washington’s engineering building, as Adam Gutierrez was only 14 months away from attaining his degree when he was killed.

Marianne Gutierrez described her husband as a goal-setter.

“He wanted to learn Spanish … because his grandma only spoke Spanish,” she said. “She recently passed away a month or so ago in Los Angeles. Whenever we’d go down there, he’d do his best to speak his Spanglish. She appreciated the effort.”

While many have asked Marianne Gutierrez if she plans on returning to the East Coast, where she’s from, she has no plans of leaving her home in northeast Tacoma.

“I like it here,” she said. “It’s always a conflicting statement when I say its a really nice area and it’s safe. But I guess it’s not? I don’t know.”

After the murder, Marianne Gutierrez’s family walked with her to the site where Adam was shot.

“They said, ‘Oh, this is a really nice neighborhood. It looks safe,'” she said. “Yeah, it does. That’s why we don’t know what happened.”

If and when her husband’s murder is solved, Marianne Gutierrez said she’ll go to every hearing and fully be involved in the justice process. But she’s not sure if she’ll ever be prepared for the suspect’s reasoning or apology – if he or she does apologize.

“It’s not gonna change anything,” she said. “I’m not gonna believe them. For whatever reason they did it, it’s not gonna matter. They’ve already done what they’ve done.”

But, she said, deciding to forgive that person is another dilemma – one she hasn’t come to terms with yet.

“Should I forgive them so it doesn’t weigh on my conscience?” she said. “I don’t know.”

Anyone with information on Adam Gutierrez’s murder or any other Federal Way murder is encouraged to contact the Federal Way Police Department at 253-835-2121 or on the department’s anonymous tip website, www.safecityfw.com.

Crime Stoppers of Puget Sound (1-800-222-8477) is also accepting anonymous tips and is offering a reward for information that leads to arrests.