Deputy 'you could count on' is killed while volunteering

Outside the entrance to Fright Farm in Maplewood, black tape covered the sheriff's emblems on the doors of a patrol car Sunday. Flowers and notes on the windshield paid tribute to Mike Wilken, a Ramsey County reserve deputy and regular haunted house volunteer who had died just hours before.

Wilken, 56, of Newport, was on traffic duty for the event when a vehicle driven by a "common Joe Citizen" struck him at about 8:30 p.m. Saturday near the intersection of White Bear Avenue and Frost Avenue, said Maplewood police Sgt. Kevin Johnson.

Wilken suffered multiple critical injuries and was taken to Regions Hospital in St. Paul, where he died early Sunday morning.

Sunday was a tough day for the volunteers at the haunted house, which the Ramsey County Sheriff's Office runs to raise money for the D.A.R.E. drug- prevention program.

"I feel horrible. He was a member of the family," said Ramsey County sheriff's Cmdr. Brad Camitsch, who started Fright Farm in 1996. "We're kind of trying to keep a stiff upper lip. People are coming, expecting to have some fun, and we're trying to give them that."

The haunted house, which drew 12,000 people last fall, raises $40,000 or more a year. It operates in a barn that opened in 1918 as a county "poor farm" where locals came to work off their debts. A potter's field nearby is the final resting place for nearly 3,000 souls, including homeless people and hospital patients who died between 1894 and 1923 without family or friends to pay for funerals.

On Saturday, some 1,500 people showed up to tour the barn's time-travel machine, gorilla cage and other thrills. When Wilken was hit, hundreds of people were still in line to get in. Volunteers kept working even as word spread that their friend was badly hurt, Camitsch said.

Parents and costumed kids who trooped up to the haunted house on Sunday found that the usual admission fee had been waived. Instead, a note near the ticket counter invited guests to make donations to Wilken's family.

The Maplewood Police Department and the Minnesota State Patrol are investigating the incident. Authorities did not release the driver's name on Sunday, but Johnson said he was not arrested. There was no indication that drugs or alcohol played a role in the accident, Johnson said.

If criminal charges result from the accident, the decision to file them would not be made until after the reconstruction report is complete, which could take months, said Lt. Matt Langer of the State Patrol.

Wilken is survived by his wife, Donna, and two grown children.

Donna Wilken said Sunday her husband was a loving man and the kind of father who used to serve as "cookie mom" for his daughter's Girl Scout troop, going through piles of cookie boxes during the big fundraisers to help each scout fill her orders.

A "gentle giant" of a man, Wilken served at everything from parades to hockey games, Knafla said.

"There's a select few guys that you knew you could count on if you called them, and Mike was one of those guys."