Santa Ana Register
March 31, 1927

Officer Lauren E. Hurd, 26, youngest of the Orange County state traffic officers, died in the Santa Fe hospital, Los Angeles, at 8:25 a.m. on March 31, as the result of an operation when surgeons attempted to permanently correct a fractured arm, suffered in an accident 16 months ago.

Hurd was thought to have been on the road to recovery and relatives, who were with him during the operation, had returned to Santa Ana. At 5 a.m. his condition took a sudden turn for the worse and he died a little more than three hours later.

A sudden heart attack under the heavy strain of the anesthetic is believed to have been the cause of death.

His wife, Edith; mother, Mrs. Charles E. Hurd; and a cousin, Miss Dorothy Ridgewell; were at Hurd’s bedside when he died. They had rushed to the hospital from their homes when word came that Hurd was sinking rapidly.

His father, an employee in the Santa Ana Post Office, left here shortly after 8 a.m. but was not able to reach the hospital before his son’s death.

In addition to his widow, his mother and father, Hurd is survived by a sister, Miss Dorothy O. Hurd, a student in the California Conservatory of Music in Stockton.

Lauren Hurd, known to his most intimate friends as “Pat,” was well known in Orange County. Popular with his fellow officers, he also made friends on the road, where he had worked for the past 13 months.

The indirect cause of Hurd’s death was a motorcycle accident on South Main Street, near Delhi on Nov. 9, 1925. His machine collided with an automobile, reported to have been suddenly driven out onto the highway from a cross street. Hurd suffered a fractured right arm just above the elbow. The injury was not considered serious at the time.

When the bone did not mend, surgeons performed an operation in November 1926. At this time the arm was rebroken and ligaments, which had grown over the ends of the bones, scraped away.

This operation was unsuccessful and several weeks ago it was decided to perform another operation, this time taking a piece of the shin bone from one leg and grafting it to the broken arm.

That was the operation performed Tuesday. It was a long, tedious task for the surgeons and the amount of anesthetic it became necessary to administer to Hurd proved too hard on the heart, it was said.

Hurd was a native of Massachusetts. He was born in North Adams and was educated in the schools of that city. Later he worked on the North Adams daily paper, coming to California with his wife and family in 1921.

Soon after his arriving here, he was employed in the editorial department of The Register, working there until June 1, 1923. On June 6 he was appointed to the Santa Ana police force, as a patrolman. He held this position until Sept. 9, 1924, when he resigned to become motorcycle officer in the City of Orange.

Hurd resigned from the Orange Police Department in September 1925 to accept a position as a state traffic officer where he had since been employed. In spite of his injured arm, he had been working for the state until the day prior to his going to Los Angeles for his final operation.