Roland “Skip” Chevalier, a White male age 33 from Fairbanks, Alaska, spent the afternoon of April 3, 1982 at the Cleary Summit Ski Area when sudden gunfire cracked the spring air. An Alaska State Trooper six years into his service, he was inside the lodge when the shots rang out. He stepped into the cold to investigate a violent domestic dispute unfolding outside, where a drunken father had turned on his own mentally ill son.
As Trooper Chevalier closed the distance toward the younger man, a. 30–06 round struck him in the heart, ending the life of the 33-year-old officer before help could reach him.
In the aftermath, investigators and prosecutors faced a tangle of family tragedy and intent. The son, who fired the fatal shot, argued he had been defending himself from his father and that the death of the 33-year-old trooper was an accident in the chaos. A jury acquitted the son of murder, while the father—whose drunken aggression set the confrontation in motion—was convicted of attempted murder. The weapon, the domestic dispute at Cleary Summit, and the courtroom outcomes together fixed the contours of the case: no murder conviction for the shooter, but legal accountability for the father's role in sparking the violence.
Beyond the headlines, Roland “Skip” Chevalier left behind a family—a wife, a daughter, and a son—and a record of service remembered each April by colleagues and the community he protected. Memorial tributes continue to mark his end of watch on April 3, 1982, keeping alive the story of a 33-year-old trooper who ran toward danger on a Fairbanks hillside and never came back.
