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By Duane Wolfe
Parkers Prairie (Minn.) Police Department
To celebrate our 20th Wedding Anniversary, my wife and I took a trip to South Africa. Part of the trip included sightseeing in the St. Lucia Estuary an area filled with crocodiles, hippos and lots of other wildlife. The area is protected because it has a fragile ecosystem. We took a boat ride that ended with a sunset view of the river as we floated back to the dock. The guide, part comedian and part philosopher, told us about a crab that lived in the water. The crab lived off the material that covered the exposed roots of the mangrove trees that lined the bank. He explained that the crabs helped the trees by cleaning the roots in order for the trees to get more nutrition from the water. He also explained that the loss of the crab could result in the loss of the mangrove tree, which would result in the loss of the habitat, which would result in the loss of the animals.
He said he told us that as a reminder that no matter how small we may feel in life, no matter how insignificant we may feel in the overall scheme of the world, we each had a much larger impact whether we realized it or not
We had been home from the vacation for just one day when the phone rang at about dinner time. I assumed it was either one of our relatives calling to check on us or a telemarketer. I answer the phone and the voice asked to speak to, “Mrs. Lynn Wolfe.” Nobody we know would refer to my wife like that and the voice had a foreign accent to it, confirming to me that it was a telemarketer. I told him she wasn’t home, hung up and hoped that he wouldn’t call back.
There was something familiar in the voice that I thought I recognized, but I let the thought go. A few hours later, the phone rang again and I could hear my wife talking to someone for a long time. When she got off the phone she said, “You’ll never guess who that was.” Offering me a hint, she told me that it was one of her former students. I guessed the first name that came to mind and she wondered how I had guessed. It was someone I’ll refer to here simply as ‘V.’
The last time I had seen V he was being lead away in handcuffs to a juvenile detention center. He had been found guilty in a series of burglaries to businesses in my old jurisdiction. In the last burglary, he and several accomplices had broken into a gun shop and stolen a quantity of handguns. When he was arrested he had just thrown a loaded .44 revolver into a dumpster when another officer came around the corner doing business checks at 0300. Seeing V and his two main accomplices out at that hour and knowing that we had conducted a series of search warrants at his parent’s home in the last few weeks lead to their arrest for a number of felonies. At the time I had no doubt that V would have shot the officer if he had been a minute sooner.
I had gotten to know V very well back when I was a rookie officer 20 years ago. My wife was a teacher of Emotionally/Behaviorally Disturbed children at the local elementary school. We used to joke that all her students were my future suspects, and V was one of her toughest cases. His parents were Lao refugees who had immigrated and ended up in a small town factory town in northern Minnesota. Both his parents worked at the local factory, trying to raise their three daughters and one very troubled son. His family had survived the long trek into Thailand, the refugee camps, and the trip to the U.S.
V was extremely intelligent – he had IQ of 145 – but was prone to violent outbursts. On two occasions, he had tried to stab my wife with a protractor – a bad choice on his part. On another occasion, he had given her a concussion by head butting her head into a concrete wall as she attempted to physically restrain him. Another time she had grabbed him and pulled him out of the way of an oncoming truck that he had darted in front of in an apparent suicide attempt. Despite all his problems, violence, and anger she always saw some good in him and tried to bring that out.
After he moved on to Junior High, her only contact with him was my frequent reports of his activities as a juvenile delinquent, which included theft, burglary, and assaults with and without weapons. Following one particular investigation, he and his cohorts confessed to 33 burglaries. The case was dismissed when the judge determined that he had not understood his rights under Miranda. He pretended not to understand English and a less than motivated attorney hadn’t bothered to let us know what objections were going to be raised at the pre-trial hearing.
The next contact after that was a series of business burglaries that resulted in six different search warrants being served on his parent’s home. Each time we found evidence linking him to the burglary but because he was a juvenile and these were property crimes the judge couldn’t place him on a juvenile hold. V would just laugh at us as he walked out the door.
The burglary of the gun store ended his laughter. He had now made it to the big time. Not only was he in possession of a loaded weapon, he also threatened the officers on scene. He had a look of complete surprise when we took him to the squad car in handcuffs and explained that he would not being going home but instead was going to juvenile detention. I took special delight in giving him the news.
I left that job about a year later but kept tabs on V. He apparently didn’t change his ways after that. He reached 18, served time in jail and finally was sent to prison for a statutory rape charge. After that, we lost track of him but often wondered what happen to him.
The call came 15 years after we had last seen him. He was 31, married with two kids and living in California. He had looked our phone number up on the Internet and called to say “thank you.”
He thanked my wife for all her hard work in trying to straighten him out. He said he had a lot of time to think in jail and prison and that he was always most thankful to her because she never gave up. He thanked me for being tough on him and for being a “good human being.” On one of those search warrants I found a large quantity of fish in the fridge, an obvious fish and game violation. I didn’t charge his parents for the violation or take the fish. He said his parents appreciated not being charged and the fish not being confiscated because it was all they had to eat.
V said he called to let us know that he wasn’t “worthless.” He said because of his criminal record it was hard for him to find a job. He had told his wife all about his past and in spite of all of it she loved him and accepted him for who he was. She had a good job so he stayed home and took care of his children. He said he had changed his ways after getting out of prison and was staying on the right side of the law. Of course, my wife had several job ideas for him and he said he would look into them.
He also said he wanted to say how sorry he was. Sorry for the times he hurt or tried to hurt my wife and others. Sorry for being a thief and burglar. Sorry for taking so long to get his life together.
My wife will get phone calls or letters of thanks every so often from former students telling her how much she meant to them and how much she helped them. As a cop I get those calls and letters a whole lot less often, but that is what makes them special.
As we sat there talking about the phone call, the words of that river guide came back to me. “No matter how small we may feel in life, no matter how insignificant we may feel in the overall scheme of the world, we each had a much larger impact whether we realized it or not.”
