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I worked in a town with one traffic light, 44 streets, and about 5 miles of north and southbound interstate. During the course of the night we were required to do light pole checks, and the usual patrolling of the neighborhoods. Most nights you were out there as a one man unit. Some nights, though rarely, there were two one-man units. It was nights like that where the boring night could be fun if you wanted it to be.

On this particular night, I was the one man unit on the schedule. Well, Mark decided to put in some overtime and he invited his buddy from the jail to ride along with him. His buddy had been working in the jail and had been interested in police work and wanted to see first hand what police work was like. Well, this was going to be his night!

At about 2AM I hadn't heard Mark on the radio, and the interstate was 'dead' so I decided to go see what he was up to. I drove down the Main street and could see that he was busy doing security checks and light checks. That's when it hit me. I was going to do SOMETHING to liven things up a bit.

I saw that he was two streets down from the ball-field, and did some figuring. I called our local dispatcher and told him to call Mark on the radio and advise him of a car doing do-nuts at the ballfield. Mind you, there was a road that lead to the ball field and it wrapped back around to the Main street. I also told the dispatcher to tell him it was a white car. (All of our patrol cars were white with reflective striping).

I heard the call over the radio, called Mark and asked if he needed any assistance, he responded "Negative, I have a ride-along, we got this one.. just be in the area".

I parked my patrol car on the roadway and waited until I could see him turning into the ball field. When I saw that he made the entrance, I turned off my lights, tapped my brakes and 'gunned' it. At that same time Mark was on the radio advising that he saw the vehicle and was going to stop him. He then asked my '20' and I told him I was on the 'I' heading his way. I made the first right turn and saw the blue lights coming.. all the while Mark was on the radio trying to describe the car he was chasing and the direction of travel. I could tell by the sound of his voice he was extremely excited. I radio'ed back that I made it to Main St and to keep the vehicle in sight.

I made the next right turn and rushed to the stop sign on the corner, parked, got out of my car and sat on the trunk of the patrol car awaiting his arrival. There he was coming quick, blue lights flashing... then suddenly as his headlights reached me, the blue lights went dim, he slowed to a crawl and approached me.

He rolled down his window, both he and his ride along were shaking, and then roaring with laughter as I laughed and fell off the trunk of my car...

This is one of the memories I have of a fellow officer who died in the line of duty two years ago. I hope he's reading it and hearing the laughter from those others reading it. That was a good time.

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