Hero Villain Cops

by Courtney Pierce

Today I'm compelled to twist around this month's theme of "villains you love to hate." Instead, what about the thousands of real-life heroes I love who are being cast as villains? 

One of those is a cops saved my life in 1969. Ever since then, the police have been elevated to a position of utmost respect in my eyes.

I spent part of my youth living in the small fishing town of Cohasset, Massachusetts. I wasn’t one of those blue-blood kids from Boston who spent the summer in a palatial part-time home. They called residents like me a “Townie,” kids who lived there all year round. 

So what triggered my fifty-year respect-a-thon with law enforcement? When I was ten years old, I got really sick . . . the emergency kind.

Back in the late sixties, Cohasset didn’t have ambulance service. The police handled most situations; they saved accident victims, arrested perpetrators, found stolen bikes, and retrieved pets that harassed the ducks in the town fountain. With no leash law in place, our German Shepard was a regular perpetrator. Her low-tide antics in the clam flats in Cohasset harbor became small town entertainment. A policeman would regularly pull into our driveway to eject our muddy dog from the cruiser. The reward was a quick cup of coffee and a generous slice of cinnamon streusel cake at our kitchen table. 

My stay-at-home Mom never learned to drive. My Dad worked in Boston during the week and came home on Friday night for a weekend of grocery shopping and schlepping me to my music lessons at the South Shore Conservatory of Music. My evenings were spent exploring on my bike, dreaming of what the future held for me. Independence was mine with no phone, Internet, and video games to eclipse my imagination. Given how safe our town was, Mom was fine with letting both our dog and me run loose. She didn’t worry about my being kidnapped, violated, or killed.

However, one weekday morning my gut started to hurt. Whoozy, I plopped myself on the couch for a quick shot of Bugs Bunny. Daffy’s declaration of “Thuffering Thuccotash” echoed the pain and nausea in my gut.

“Mom,” I called out, “my stomach hurts.”

“You probably ate something bad,” Mom said, banging dishes in the kitchen. “It’ll run its course. You’d better get ready for school.”

I moaned and shifted as my two-year-old little sister fussed for attention. Cartoons ceased to be entertaining.

The pain soon became unbearable. “Mom! Help me!”

Mom's radar must've gone off, because she rushed to my side. Her eyes widened. “We’ve got to go. Can you get up?”

I pulled myself upright with a cry-out from the pain. Mom gathered my little sister in her arms, grabbed her purse, and we walked the quarter mile to Dr. Seary’s office. Every step was a chore and my hair dampened with fevered sweat. Thankfully, our doctor practiced from a small house down the street. When we finally got there, Doc whisked me into his office. I felt weak as he helped me to lay on the table and pressed my belly. He whispered something to his nurse. She made a hasty exit.

Dr. Seary looked up at my mother. “Her appendix has ruptured. She needs to get to Mass General for surgery as fast as possible. Leave the little one here. We’ll take care of her while we get you and Courtney to the hospital.”

Before I could take my next deep breath, a police cruiser skidded on the gravel driveway in front of the office. The back door opened and my mother slipped into the seat. Dr. Seary carried me outside and handed me off to the policeman. I eyed the gun on his hip as his strong arms carried me to cruiser. He gently laid me on the seat with my head on my Mom’s lap. Mom stroked my wet hair as the engine revved and the siren erupted. 

Sirens always made my blood race. This one blared for me, someone who wasn’t a murderer or a thief. I faded in and out with thoughts about adding "saving kids" to the list of what the police do.

The morning commute traffic became an obstacle course all the way to Boston. Cars parted as we maneuvered through the rush-hour clog entering Boston, the cruiser shifting lanes and racing on the shoulder. Beneath the siren, a babble of voices crackled on the radio dispatch as we screeched through red lights. I was only half aware of what the policeman had to do for me to get to the hospital, but in my poisoned gut I knew I’d get there. I had trust, a kid’s blind trust.

About twenty minutes later, the cruiser jerked to a stop. Strong arms lifted me. My limbs went limp as the policeman rushed me into the emergency room. I was giving up, a surrender of my life to God as I was raised to believe. 

Awaiting me were dozens of student interns, lined up at the door of the examination room, anxious to experience their first peritonitis case. Press after painful press of my stomach resulted in my being whisked into surgery. 

The policeman caught up with the gurney on the sterile route.  He'd waited just for me.

“You’re going to be okay, kiddo,” he said and squeezed my hand. They were exactly the right words a hurtin’ kiddo needed to hear before the medication took hold. Everything and everyone faded away before I could respond.

I was allergic to antibiotics, which made my situation dire. The day went on without me. It was well into the night when my eyes finally opened after surgery. A group of Episcopal nuns stood by my bedside, their heads down in prayer, presumably giving me my last rights. I thought it was silly, but I had no idea what had happened in the adult world while I had been out. All I knew was that I was alive and without pain.

It took a whole month for me to recover. I spent the summer, and the next two, with the Sisters of St. Margaret’s at their camp in Duxbury. I sang and sang, becoming the lead of Mary Poppins in the camp musical. All my voice lessons led to roles in musicals in high school. Hard work led to roles in operas when I was in college. Ten years later, I had earned a Bachelor’s degree in Music and Voice at San Jose State University in California.

I would never would have had a 28-year executive career in Broadway entertainment without the caring and commitment of a lone policeman. Now at the age of sixty-one, connecting the dots of my life is a humbling task.

I never again saw that policeman who saved my life, but my Mom and Dad did. The policeman's friends did. I’m sure his family were awed at his heroic act when he finally got home that fateful night. He'd saved another kid. 

All in a day’s work for a cop. To me, it meant the rest of my life, allowing me to now have a paradise of a Montana home, a wonderful husband who loves me endlessly, a loving family, and a satisfying existence as a writer.

Curious, I researched how many lives were saved each year by the police. It’s an impossible statistic to get without a myriad of digging. Google was happy to give me the number of deaths—a mere 999 lives taken per year in the entire U.S.—but the number of lives saved were sadly suppressed from the online search results. Positive images were also difficult to find. 

After a deep dive, I finally found the metric I was looking for: each policeman in the United States saves an average of one life per month. When I multiplied the numbers, I was shocked that it equated to millions of lives saved each year across the country. The police rack up these numbers with CPR, talking people down from the ledge, rescuing the abused, and stabilizing lives before the ambulance arrives.

In my case, I was a ten-year-old kid with a heck-of-a bellyache, one that was well on its way to killing me. I would never have been here to write this blog without a heck-of-a policeman who put his life on the line to save mine.

 And I will be forever grateful I’m here because of him. 

Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer living in Kalispell, Montana with her husband, stepdaughter, and their brainiac cat, Princeton. Courtney writes for the baby boomer audience. She spent 28 years as an executive in the entertainment industry and used her time in a theater seat to create stories that are filled with heart, humor, and mystery. She studied craft and storytelling at the Attic Institute and has completed the Hawthorne Fellows Program for writing and publishing. Active in the writing community, Courtney is a board member of the Northwest Independent Writers Association and on the Advisory Council of the Independent Publishing Resource Center. She is a member of Willamette Writers, Pacific Northwest Writers Association, and Authors of the Flathead. The Executrix received the Library Journal Self-E recommendation seal.

Print and E-books are available through most major online retailers, including Amazon.com.

Check out all of Courtney's books: 

courtney-pierce.com and windtreepress.com 

New York Times best-selling author Karen Karbo says, "Courtney Pierce spins a madcap tale of family grudges, sisterly love, unexpected romance, mysterious mobsters and dog love. Reading Indigo Lake is like drinking champagne with a chaser of Mountain Dew. Pure Delight."

Coming in 2021!

When Aubrey Cenderon moves to Montana after the death of her father, the peace and quiet of Big Sky Country becomes complicated with a knock on the door from the sheriff. An injured grizzly bear is on the loose and it must be eliminated before it kills again. The sheriff's insistence that she buy a gun for protection will present Aubrey with some serious soul-searching, because the grizzly-on-the-run is hunting for her too . . . for a different reason.