Life of Metro Transit’s Beverly Rodriguez to be celebrated after posthumous promotion to lieutenant

Beverly Rodriguez, the Metro Transit police sergeant who died in an apparent drowning in White Bear Lake while off-duty over the weekend, will be memorialized Friday as Lt. Beverly Rodriguez.

Interim Police Chief Joe Dotseth said Rodriguez “was truly a rising star at the Metro Transit Police Department. She embodied the finest qualities of our noble profession, approaching every aspect of her work with genuine kindness, infectious enthusiasm, quiet confidence and remarkable creativity.”

Dotseth added that her promotion, effective Wednesday, “reflects not only what she accomplished in her time with us, but how high we know she would have climbed in the years ahead.”

A public celebration of life for Rodriguez is scheduled for 10 a.m. Friday at Stillwater Area High School gym, 5701 Stillwater Boulevard, Oak Park Heights.

About 2:30 p.m. Sunday, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office was dispatched to the east side of the lake on a report of a woman drowning.

The Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that she “had entered the water from a boat and had been under the water in excess of 40 minutes.”

A rescue dive team located Rodriguez, who was transported to Regions Hospital and pronounced dead, according to the statement.

In addition, the statement added, “she will be forever remembered for her kindness, passion, humor, servant heart, athleticism and sense of adventure.”

In February 2024, a Metro Transit video featured Rodriguez and her work with the department’s Homeless Action Team.

She said on the video that the team was formed “to address all the folks that were sleeping on the trains, on the buses and sleeping on any transit property. We realized we were probably becoming the biggest shelter in the state of Minnesota for homeless, so the need was out there.”

Rodriguez added that “our main priority is to help folks get off the trains and into some type of program or into some type of housing, shelter.”

Among that job’s challenges, she said, was “we have to be a social worker at the same time we have to be a police officer.”

Rodriguez was born in Harlingen, Texas, and grew up as the middle of seven children, according to her online obituary.

She moved north and graduated from La Qui Parle Valley High School in western Minnesota in 2004, Rodriguez went on to work for the Three Rivers Park District, “which helped her to decide to study law enforcement at Hennepin Technical College, where she earned her certificate of law enforcement in 2014,” the obituary read.

Rodriguez is preceded in death by her father, Eliaz Rodriguez. Her survivors include sons Macallen and Macody; her mother Eduvilia “Martha” Rodriguez; and siblings Robert Rodriguez, Judy Lopez, Jennifer Rodriguez, Thomas Rodriguez, Eric Rodriguez and Diana Rodriguez.

The obituary also listed as survivors “her two K9s, Bristol and Brindle, and ”her true brothers and sisters in the Metro Transit Police Department and the National Latino Peace Officers Association."