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Western Washington University students graduated June 16th, and though graduate Emily Hanger didn’t have her father there, she had his badge, and his fellow State Patrol troopers.

 reports Emily’s father, Detective Brent Hanger, died of a heart attack while on assignment in August 2016.

A group of troopers watched as Emily walked across the stage with her father’s badge at the graduation ceremony.

They say Emily plans to spend the next several months training to become a WSP trooper, and while the agency offered to take her dad’s badge number out of retirement for her to use, she says she wants to “blaze her own path.”