One of the craziest calls that comes to mind is fending off a black panther that had gotten loose from its owner's cage. It attacked my partner and then me. All I could do was strike it on the head with my flashlight. It ran off and was captured by the zoo.

I responded to a call from the mother of a three-month-old baby at about 2:00 a.m. Over the radio, I could actually hear the mother screaming, “My baby’s not breathing!” I rushed over there, and as I went through the door, the mom was holding the little fella. He was just a little ol’ baby. He was limp, he wasn’t breathing, and he’d already turned blue. The first thing I did was say, “God, you’ve got to help this kid.” I took him from the mom, and I pressed on his back and didn’t get anything. I rolled him over and I held him in my arm and started doing CPR compressions for an infant. I’d do compressions for a little bit, and then I would kind of sit him up and give him a little air, then I’d do compressions again. I probably did that for, I don’t know, it felt like a lifetime, but it was probably a few minutes. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, it sounded like a grown man taking a big breath, and the baby put out a little cry. At that point in time, nothing else in the world existed. Everything was all good. I was actually just the instrument that God used to get it done. If that is the only thing I accomplish being a police officer—if that’s why I was put in Rockdale, Texas, to save that baby’s life, I’m fine with it.

On September 15, 1999, when I was 16, a friend invited me to attend a youth concert at Wedgewood Baptist Church in Fort Worth. That was the night that Larry Gene Ashbrook entered the church and shot and killed seven people, injured another seven, then shot and killed himself. The first person to breach those doors to get us out was an off-duty Fort Worth police officer. It evidently impacted my life because he represented safety, security, and rescue. He got us out of that situation. The shooting had already ended, but the fact that he broke through those doors not knowing what to expect spoke volumes.