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.

A Different Drummer by Lynn Lovegreen

(Note: this was previously posted on www.lynnlovegreen.com.)

I was the nice, quiet kid who read a lot. I had friends and could be social when I was in the mood or circumstances called for it, but I was a bit weird. One of my favorite things to do was find a quiet place in the woods and tell myself fairy stories. While other kids played sports, I curled up with a book or listened to Beatles records with my oldest sister. (For those of you who missed out on records, the best part was the LP covers. They were huge canvases for art and often had the lyrics inside or on the back, so we could follow along and analyze them in a way that’s hard to do with downloaded songs on our phones.) 

In high school, I had requisite crushes on cute guys, but I also had a thing for Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe and Romantic poet John Keats. I was a drama geek who memorized the soundtrack of A Chorus Line years before I ever saw it. I listened to music in my room for hours. The Beatles were still sacred to me, but I also learned lyrics by Billy Joel, Elton John, and others. Starting to notice a pattern here—words and stories?

It was no surprise to anyone that I became an English teacher. I loved reading and writing with teenagers. And sometimes they did, too. There’s nothing more rewarding than giving a teen a book and watching them fall in love with it. And a class NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) project led to writing my first novel and a new passion connected to words.

Skip a few years, and here I am, writing young adult historical fiction set in my home state. I hope to inspire and entertain teens (and those who love them) with stories of old Alaska. I am still marching to a different drummer, as there are few of us in this particular niche. But I couldn’t be happier about my current calling. It feels right for me, and gives me joy. Whether it’s researching, writing, connecting with other writers, or hanging out with teens, teachers, and librarians, it’s all fun, interesting or both at the same time. 

How are you stepping to the music of a different drummer? What are the rewards you’ve found in doing that?

Lynn Lovegreen has lived in Alaska for over fifty years. After twenty years in the classroom, she retired to make more time for writing. She enjoys her friends and family, reading, and volunteering at her local library. Her young adult historical fiction is set in Alaska, a great place for drama, romance, and independent characters. See her website at www.lynnlovegreen.com. You can also find her on Facebook and Instagram.

The Long Journey of Imagination

By Courtney Pierce

On this wondrous Christmas Eve, like all Christmas Eves of my life, I reflect on where I am today and how I got here. A writer’s journey is a long one. In my case, stories burned from a very young age. I didn’t do anything about them, though, until I was over fifty. No one could show me how to be a writer; I could only be taught the craft of construction to make my stories compelling and readable. The ideas, though, were completely on my head—or in my head, so to speak.

This writing journey started with my being a mimic at the age of four or five, regurgitating up jingles from commercials and imitating the talking heads on newscasts. If I say so myself, I did a pretty good Walter Cronkite with my version of "Now for the news..." I’d dance around and sing the day's headlines for my Mom while she made dinner. When my Dad came home from work, I’d assault him at the door with my latest tune about Vietnam, the Marlboro Man, or Mao Zedong. Sometimes I’d snap my fingers with new words to the theme song from The Addams Family.

Jingles turned into stories. I’d spout out only a sentence or two that started with “What if this guy was a concert pianist and he had eyes on his fingers?” or “So there was a kid who had three ears, and one of them could hear things in outer space . . . ” And on it went.

My parents would just shake their heads and say, “Where does she come up with this stuff?”

As a baby boomer, I’m obsessed with analyzing those wondrous moments of youth, as if I could capture and bottle them. Now that I’m all grown up, I like to pull apart those emotions of puberty and young adulthood to see how they shaped the person I am today. Without a doubt, my spirit is still based on three major food groups: wishes, dreams, and being in love.

I’m still the same. Nothing has changed, except that the made-up stories are more intense when combined with colorful history and life experience.

Recently, my older sister and I were comparing notes about getting into trouble in middle school. I was a goody-two-shoes; she was a sneaky rebel. I distinctly remember one incident in 6^th grade where my teacher gave me detention for not paying attention in class—repeatedly. Mrs. Truesdale was her name. She was over 6-foot tall, intimidating, old, and a grump. And not only did she give me detention, she called my parents to come to the school for a gang-up meeting.

To be clear, my parents found this a loathsome chore, as if they, themselves, had also been ordered to squirm in detention. I was the meat in a double-trouble sandwich of Mrs. Truesdale and my parents. Here’s an annotated version of how the scoldy meeting went:

“Your daughter doesn’t pay attention in my class,” Mrs. Truesdale announced. She punctuated the statement by smacking her hand on the desk. “Courtney just stares out the window. I don’t know what to do with her.”

My father turned to me. “Is this true?”One of his vivid aqua eyes floated 45 degrees west of my right shoulder. Craziest thing that eye, but it was focused on me from somewhere over there.

“Yes,” I said and gnarled my fingers. Then I turned to the window. Slight shimmers of the fall maple leaves were much more interesting than this conversation.

My mother chimed in and pointed. “What’s out there?”

“I don’t know,” I said and shrugged. “All kinds of things.”

Mrs. Truesdale eased with an expression of triumph. “See? She doesn’t pay attention.”

My mother pinned Mrs. Truesdale with a scrutinizing stare. “But she gets As on all her tests. I don’t understand what the problem is.”

“That’s the most frustrating part,” my teacher countered. “I never know if I’m getting through.”

Dad started laughing. “Join the club. Courtney's bored. You'll need to be more interesting or she's liable to break into song when you least expect it.”

Mom pursed her lips and stood. “I think we’re done here. Leave our daughter alone. She’s fine.”

Go Mom and Dad! I will forever thank them for coming to my defense. My parents saw something in me that my teacher didn’t. From then on, they never scoffed at my stories or jingles again.

Those moments of staring out the window became the fodder of future stories that would percolate for over forty years. The seeds of them were never dormant as I went to college, got married at twenty, became responsible, and nurtured a career. Then they sprung to life with the fuel of burning desire. When I finally learned how to turn my ideas into books, it was like starting over. My young-girl imagination blossomed again with the infusion of experience, wisdom, and education.

Every thought I had in my budding youth felt original and fresh, as if ideas had bubbled up from inside instead of coming from somewhere or someone else. I grew up without the crutch of electronic devices. A set of World Books and a library card gave me the ability to verify facts. The rest of my great wisdom came from Bugs Bunny, Gilligan’s Island, Bewitched, and I Dream of Jeannie. In the new world of Google, smartphones, NetFlix, and texts, I often wonder what the future holds for stories by writers who are growing up in this electronic age. Will young writers not be able to come up with anything on their own? 

I've heard it said that the older we get, the younger we grow.  I think that's all too true. Those confusing thoughts of my youth and hard knocks of adulthood eventually did give way to greater understanding, and along with it came confidence and self-respect. But make no mistake—imagination is hard work. It’s an investment in one’s self to mold who we are and shape the person we’ll become. And the reward is to turn creative thoughts into a book, a song, or a magnificent work of art.

And on this beautiful Christmas Eve at our home in Montana, the CrockPot releases the aroma of the self-managed beef stew. My stepdaughter works on a complicated puzzle at a card table. Next to me on the couch, my husband studies a detailed map of Glacier National Park to plan our next hike. Me? Well . . . my gaze pulls to the window. A light snowfall whirls on a breeze around the lights on the patio. Their dance is accompanied by the snap and pop inside the wood stove. The combination of ice and fire gives me dialogue ideas as I work on my next book, Big Sky Talk.

I wish you all a loving and safe holiday. I'll be back at you in the New Year with all kinds of new stuff!.

Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer living in Milwaukie, Oregon, with her husband. stepdaughter, and their brainiac cat, Princeton. Courtney writes for the baby boomer audience. By day, she is an executive in the entertainment industry and uses her time in a theater seat to create stories that are filled with heart, humor and mystery. She has 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 She Writes. The Executrix received the Library Journal Self-E recommendation seal.

Audiobook now Available!

Check out all of Courtney's books: 

courtney-pierce.com and

windtreepress.com 

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

Available Now!
Book 3 of the
Dushane Sisters
Trilogy

The Dushane Sisters Trilogy concludes with Indigo Legacy, available now. There's love in the air for Olivia and Woody, but will family intrigue get in the way? Ride along for the wild trip that starts in a New York auction house and peaks in a mansion on Boston's Beacon Hill. 

The Dushane sisters finally get to the truth about their mother.

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."