The Youngest Cop in Arizona

[Guest guest]

“Compassion is the chief law of human existence.”

 

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

 

 

Tommy Austin had a reputation. In his

world, lies were routine.Everyone had an excuse and an

angle. Tommy was a customs agent in Arizona.

He had to be smart and tough –Tommy was both.

 

 

Chris was a scrawny seven year old,

hospitalized for leukemia. He saw

a simpler world. His heroes were Pancho and John. They

were motorcycle cops who rode a television highway and

made good things happen. Chris wanted to be one of

them.

 

Chris’s mom, Linda, was a single

parent who had moved to Phoenix in the hope of a new

and better life. The deck she played was new, but the

hands got worse.

 

 

One evening Tommy was visiting a

friend in the hospital where Chris was staying. Chris

caught him off-guard with,” Stick-em-up. I’m a cop,

and you’re under arrest”. As men do with kids, Tommy

played along. As kids do with men, Chris returned

imagination, innocence and trust. Tommy wanted to give

a gift in return.

 

Tommy knew this scrawny kid could

never be the cop of his dreams, but he dreamed of a

way to make the kid a cop. He enlisted the help of a

couple of highway patrolmen, Scott and Frank, a couple

of women friend, his boss, and a commander in the

Arizona Department of Public Safety.

 

 

On the first day, Chris rode in a real

patrol car and turned on the siren. He flew in a

police helicopter. He rode his miniature

battery-powered police cycle and earned his “wings”.

He received a proclamation as “the first and only

official seven year old policeman in Arizona.” Two

women stayed up all night to tailor a custom uniform.

Chris lived his dream in three wondrously exciting

days of glory and love.

 

 

On the fourth day, Chris asked his mom

to bring his uniform to the hospital. Scott and Frank

pinned on his motorcycle “wings” and that day, Chris

died. There were those who thought that leukemia had

tragically claimed another child victim- but it was a

‘cop’ who died that day.

 

When Linda took him back east for

burial, the body was accompanied by the Arizona

Highway Patrol. “We bury our brothers”, they said, and

Chris had a policeman’s funeral.

 

 

A quote from Lowell tells us,

“Its’ not what we give but what we share.” Tommy,

patrolmen Scott and Frank, Chris’s mom, Linda, and

more than 11,000 volunteers in 82 chapters have shared

in Chris’s gift. The Make-A-Wish Foundation, formed

in a grieving mother’s kitchen, has granted more than

37,000 wishes for kids with life-threatening diseases

since 1980. Internationally, more than 3,000 other

kids have experienced the legacy of “the first and

only seven year old policeman in Arizona”.

 

 

 

Michael Cody.

 

 

 

Courtesy:Chicken Soup for the Soul at work.

 

 

MAY SAI BLESS US ALL!!!!!!