Editor’s note: This essay is part of “Stories from the Street,” a Police1 series featuring first-person reflections from officers across the country. These essays are about the lived experiences and moments that changed how officers think, lead and serve. If you have a story to share, we’d love to hear from you. Submit your story here.
By DB
The landmine was a present — a small desktop statue depicting an officer talking on a radio with his hand on the head of a found child. The kid is maybe five and carrying a suitcase. It’s called A Safe Return.
It’s a fine statue and a kind gesture from my wife. But every time I looked at it, I was taken straight back to one of the worst nights of my career. I started avoiding that part of the house altogether and made sure never to slow down long enough to really see it. If I did, I was instantly back there, doing CPR on a dead child — heart racing, mind completely elsewhere.
My wife had no idea the statue hurt me, and I wasn’t about to diminish her gesture.
You know what we’re good at in policing? Compartmentalizing. Have a terrible incident that cracks through the uniform and protective persona? Cram it away. Lock it up. Never think about it again. Don’t bring it home. Don’t let it in.
That isn’t a sustainable strategy.
I had stuffed away and refused to acknowledge many things — years’ worth of experiences that would destroy most people not in our line of work. I’d watched coworkers clearly suffering from PTSD. Sometimes I intervened. I knew exactly what a downhill slide looked like.
Then one night, I was blindsided by learning that my teenage son was having suicidal thoughts.
I held it together to help him, but behind the scenes, I was unraveling fast. We work so hard to stabilize chaos at work — how in the hell was this happening at home? The thought of losing my child overwhelmed everything. I couldn’t sleep. My mind was in overdrive. I started rationalizing alcohol just to fall asleep, and the drinking escalated quickly.
Thankfully, a friend came over one day and noticed I was smashed. He gave me no choice but to seek counseling. The irony wasn’t lost on me — the year before, I’d done the same thing to him. I argued, but it fell flat. He knew what distress looked like and told me I didn’t have a choice.
So I went to the counselor I’d recommended to others.
I laughed at her during the first visit. Told her this was all bullshit. She bluntly told me there was no harm in trying and reminded me that I personally knew people she’d helped.
We picked through the wreckage of a career’s worth of trauma until we found the reason I couldn’t stand that statue in my house.
It came from a missing child call.
A seven-year-old girl had been given the house keys and rushed ahead of her mom, who was carrying groceries, to open the apartment door. She never made it. While I was inside talking to the mother, I heard a whistle outside. I ran out and found people standing over the girl, crumpled in the bushes, foaming at the mouth and pulseless.
My partner and I started CPR while the ambulance was called.
This kind of trauma isn’t something humans are meant to absorb. What made it unbearable for me was this: the girl looked exactly like my daughter. Same hair. Same build. Everything. I knew she wasn’t my kid, but my irrational brain convinced me she was. You don’t let that show — we had a job to do — but I was frantic, desperate to save her.
The ambulance took eight minutes to arrive, which felt like an eternity. I followed it to the hospital and watched as they cracked her chest and manually massaged her heart. When she was pronounced dead, I nearly collapsed.
I believed she’d been strangled and discarded like trash.
Later we learned she’d had prior heart surgery and her heart simply gave out. That knowledge didn’t help.
My partner knew I wasn’t OK. He called our supervisor and we shut it down for the night. We grabbed food at 3 a.m. and sat in silence. I was pulling myself together before going home.
When I got there, I collapsed beside my sleeping daughter’s bed and hugged her without waking her. I accidentally woke my wife — I wasn’t supposed to be home yet. I explained what happened as briefly as I could. She didn’t ask questions. She just hugged me. Our spouses know when to talk and when to hold.
I couldn’t handle thinking about it. My wife tried to talk about it a few times, but once she saw my reaction, she knew it was off-limits. I shoved it away. She respected that.
Years later, reliving the call with a brilliant counselor, I realized something I now call the happy truth — the thing that finally released its grip on me.
That little girl’s mother and her five siblings were standing there watching us perform CPR that night. My memory had buried that detail. I called my partner, and he confirmed it. The whole family was there.
And then it clicked.
It had to be me working on that child. It had to be me — the cop with a daughter at home — giving every ounce of effort and a piece of my sanity trying to save her. That family deserved to see someone who was fully invested, who wasn’t just going through motions. We’ve all seen CPR done for appearances after the outcome is already decided. It couldn’t be a brand-new cop or someone burned out and detached.
It had to be me.
When I realized that my pain was part of what that family needed to witness — that it mattered — the trauma finally loosened its hold.
After working through it, I was finally able to talk to my wife about what happened. What had once been a no-go conversation became part of healing. The statue no longer sends me back in time. It’s sitting on my desk as I type this.
If you’ve read this far, here’s my point: Stop encapsulating trauma. Deal with it. Face it.
If you don’t, it will shape your future in ways you won’t recognize until the damage is done. Our past drives our relationships, our interactions, every part of our lives. Stuffed-away trauma wrecks friendships, stunts growth and robs us of joy.
That counselor I laughed at saved my life.
P.S. My son is healthy and thriving now.
About the author
DB is a retired California deputy sheriff.
