I Love My Community: Dan Lane
HLM: What do you love most about where you and your family live?
DL: I have lived here all my life in Stockton and Lodi, except for when I was in the service from 1968 to 1972. I’m a former United States Marine. What I love the most about living here is the people. There is so much diversity, yet we have so much commonality that draws us together like magnets.
HLM: How is your heart inspired to serve the community?
DL: My heart is inspired and dedicated to serving veterans and I am called by God to serve in men’s ministry. I absolutely love the Kiwanis function in serving the youth. I enthusiastically look forward to serving the Lodi PD as a chaplain.
HLM: What sparks joy for you?
DL: My church family and the youth program we have there sparks joy in my life as well as the Kiwanis Key Club, which serves high schoolers, and Circle K, which services college students. I am excited to continue to meet veterans and honor their service.
HLM: What accomplishment are you most proud of?
DL: I am absolutely dumbfounded that I was able to serve 42 years with the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Department. Law enforcement is not a vocation, it’s an avocation. I have made so many friends and helped so many people. I have numerous memories that are positive while as a law enforcement officer. I worked alongside many wonderful officers.
HLM: What’s your free time passion?
DL: I don’t like to be idle. I have been graced by God with opportunities and abilities to serve in some wonderful locations. All thanks go to God.
HLM: Top three bucket list goals?
DL: I pray that God gives me strength to continue to serve; to continue to love and be loved by my family and friends; I aspire to be a witness to so many of the youth that I am involved with in their success.
HLM: Can you describe a key event that had an impact on your life?
DL: Joining the Marine Corps completely changed the direction of my life. They challenged me to be a man in more than the physical sense; the spiritual, inner self and warrior. They proved to me that I can do anything that I tried.
HLM: Do you have a favorite quote?
DL: “It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”—Theodore Roosevelt
HLM: What are you currently reading?
DL: I am currently reading Ulysses S. Grant’s biography. He’s a man who always won even when people said he couldn’t. With the Old Breed, a firsthand account of the Marine Corps during the battles of the Pacific, this most heroic era of the Marine Corps.
HLM: Favorite food or dessert?
DL: I’m a foodie; we had a catering business for 30 years. My favorite food is barbecue tri-tip, my favorite dessert is German chocolate cake. I indulge in this homemade cake made by my wife every year, only on my birthday.
