True Police
Stories
"Courage is the ability to move;
when all around you are frozen in fear
and no one would blame you if you did nothing at all."
Capt. Click. Phx. PD
My Name is Olin Tefft
Taken from the book Think
About it... for your reading convenience
I began a career in law enforcement in about 1975 when I became a reserve deputy
for the Maricopa
County Sheriff’s Office. In 1976, I went to work for the City of Mesa. As I sit
and think about the
things to say, many incidents come to mind. I could talk about the shooting I
was involved in or I
could talk about some of the shootings or stabbings I’ve investigated as a
detective. Or any of the
other senseless crimes of violence I’ve had to deal with. I could tell about my
change of attitude
toward my fellow man and how I struggle to not lose sight of the good in life.
There are many lessons
I have learned in my twenty years in law enforcement.
But maybe I’ll tell you instead of the rope of hope that Jesus Christ offers me.
The rope of hope that
tells me someday, the evil will be separated from the good and all the wrongs
will be made right. For
Christ truly exists and He has an actual plan for us. He is an organized God and
yes, He has one true
church. But before I tell you those stories, there is one police story I want to
tell you because so many
people make their decisions without thinking about the consequences.
I was working a six to two shift in downtown Mesa. This particular night I was
given a rookie named
Dan to train. We started out on our shift and it was the typical family fights,
burglaries, thefts and so
on until about 2300 when we received a three car accident call. Radio advised
that the accident was
a head on with several injuries. When we arrived, we observed that an older
Chevy pickup truck had
crossed over the center line and had struck head on into a new Ford Thunderbird.
A second new
Thunderbird then ran into the rear of the first Thunderbird. Both Thunderbirds
had temporary
registration stickers in their rear windows. Even more ironic, was the fact that
both husbands were
rushing their pregnant wives to Desert Samaritan Hospital as both were in labor.
The Chevy pickup
truck was occupied by three guys.
At the accident scene, I interviewed the two drivers of the two Thunderbirds and
sent them and their
pregnant wives to the hospital in an ambulance. Then I interviewed the driver of
the Chevy truck. He
told me he was in the bar across the street from the accident playing pool for
beers with some white
guy and the game turned into an argument. A fight ensued in the bar. This guy
and his two friends
left the bar and got into their Chevy truck to leave the parking lot. The white
guy chased them
outside, opened their door, climbed in and proceeded to fight with the three
occupants inside the
Chevy. The passenger in the middle reached up and bit the nose off of the white
guy during the fight
and shoved him out of the truck. The three in the Chevy truck then left the bar.
The white guy got
into his Ford truck and chased after them, ramming them at Broadway and Country
Club. This impact
knocked the Chevy into the intersection and across traffic into the path of the
two husbands trying
to get their wives to the hospital. The suspect driver in the Ford then fled the
scene. ...All this, over
six beers.
Two hours later, our suspect in the Ford showed up at Desert Samaritan Hospital.
Dan and I
responded to the hospital to interview him. We walked into the emergency room
and found him on
a gurney. He looked at us and said, “Oink, oink, oink! It looks real good
doesn’t it!” At that point
my rookie left the room and found the nearest restroom and threw up. The sight
of a human being
that has had his entire nose bitten off is a very gut twisting sight to say the
least. I asked him why he
took so long to get to the hospital. His reply was that he went home to have
another beer.
I left the ER and went into the lobby and started talking to Dean, a graveyard
Sergeant and Mike,
another officer. The rookie was still in the bathroom. Officers often make fun
of gruesome events.
It’s never right, but maybe it’s like psychologists tell us, maybe it’s our way
of relieving stress and
anxiety. Anyway, we started making jokes about the suspect. I told them that the
doctor would have
to graft skin from his butt to his face to make a nose for him and that people
would call him
“Buttface.” Mike said, “ It’s no skin off my nose what they call him.” We made
these comments and
others like them, tossing them back and forth until we finally realized that his
mother and wife were
sitting in the room where we were laughing and joking. Suddenly, it wasn’t funny
anymore. Suddenly
we all wished we hadn’t said what we said, but words spoken can’t be retracted.
I never forgot that
experience or the way it made me feel when I realized that his mother and wife
were sitting there.
Since then, I have seen numerous people hurt in the same way. I often wonder,
...how many family members, friends, co-workers or loved ones,
are hurt by loose, careless, mean and non-thinking comments.
I then talked with the suspect’s wife and mother and learned they were LDS. It
seems they were the
ones that brought the suspect to the hospital because he was too intoxicated to
drive when he arrived
home. Our noseless suspect was also LDS. In name anyway. When I talked to his
wife and mother
I was very sad that these two women had this man in their lives to deal with.
Both told me they were
active members of the Church and how much pain and anguish this man caused in
their lives. I wish
I could say there was a happy ending to this story but I’m afraid I can’t. The
doctor asked me to go
back to the bar parking lot and try and find the nose so he could reattach it. I
went back and found
it but it was in extremely poor condition. It had already been run over at least
once. I took it back to
the hospital and gave it to the doctor. He looked at it and gave it little
chance of successfully
reattaching but he said he would try. I saw my noseless friend a little over a
year later. To say what
I saw was ugly would be flattering. This experience is one I’ve never forgotten
because it is applicable
to everyday life.
As a police officer I get to see the mistakes and bad choices that people make
on a daily basis. In the
past twenty years of my law enforcement experience, I can say with authority
that a large percentage
of crimes and domestic violence are the result of drugs and alcohol use. They
diminish or remove
completely, the ability to be reasonable. The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints teaches
abstinence from both. Our noseless suspect was taught that as well but chose to
ignore those
teachings. Now like so many others, he suffers with the consequences. But even
worse, are those
around him who love him and have to suffer as well. I am grateful to live in a
time when the Lord’s
true gospel has been restored to the earth. We must live it’s principles and
teach them to our children.
If we refuse to or fail to, the old phrase “Cut off your nose to spite your
face,” may have a special
place in your mind and heart as it now has in mine.
There are many police experiences I could tell you that have helped me build my
testimony of the
truthfulness of this gospel, but there is another part of my life that I would
rather tell you about.
These experiences are worth more to me than my police experiences. They come
from a time in my
life that seems so long ago yet going back there is so refreshing and
comforting. It’s a place in my
past that helps me make sense of the future and offers me the rope of hope I
told you about.
I am a convert to the church. I joined the Church at age nineteen. Most of my
friends were LDS and
fortunately for me, like Nephi, I was raised by goodly parents. At a young age I
realized that it was
very important to choose friends wisely. All my really close friends were either
LDS or very morally
sound people. They didn’t drink, smoke, steal or commit any types of crimes. My
best friend in the
ninth grade just happened to be Sam Jeppsen and now he is my brother-in-law. You
see, I married
his kid sister. Anyway, Sam tried to get me interested in the Church and I
wasn’t very receptive. One
day I went rabbit hunting with another LDS friend of mine also named Sam. His
car broke down and
we were stranded for several hours in the desert. During that time Sam talked to
me about the Church
and this time I listened. When we arrived at Sam’s home, he gave me a Book of
Mormon and I told
him I would read it.
When I returned home to my house, I started to read the book.
After the first fifty pages I knew the book was true.
I called Sam the next morning and told him I wanted to join the Church. The
missionaries came the
next day and I was baptized the next Saturday. A year later I was given a
mission call to the Indiana,
Michigan Mission. I was blessed with many great experiences that strengthened my
testimony while
I was on that mission. Because I learned the discussions fast, after about three
weeks my mission
president made me a senior companion and gave me a new junior companion. A guy
by the name of
Elder Rowley. Rowley and I worked really hard and we had twenty-one people
taking the lessons in
about eight weeks time. We lived with a stake missionary and his wife. They were
the Tapleys.
Brother Tapley made a bet with Elder Rowley and I, that we wouldn’t baptize
anyone this particular
month. The bet was for a pizza.
Elder Rowley and I fasted and prayed about the bet and we doubled our efforts to
baptize one of our
twenty-one people that we were teaching the discussions to. We were coming along
well with our
investigators, however, it wasn’t going to be possible for us to baptize any of
them by the end of the
month. The Wednesday before the last Saturday of the month, I found an old file
box containing
investigators that previous missionaries had left behind in our apartment. I
started looking through
them and I came across the name of a young woman named Sandy. According to the
elder’s records,
Sandy had all six discussions and was attending church. The only problem was the
fact the records
were over a year old and Sandy was no longer coming to church. I decided to call
Sandy to see if she
still lived at the same address listed on her file card and maybe find out why
she wasn’t baptized. I called the phone number and a woman answered the phone. I asked the woman if
her name was
Sandy and she said it was. I then introduced myself and she responded in a very
friendly way. She said
“Oh hi Elder, what can I help you with?” I asked her if she would like to attend
a baptism on Saturday
and she responded by asking me who was getting baptized. I then told her it was
her baptism. About
fifteen seconds of silence went by and Sandy said, “OK , What time?” I then made
arrangements with
Sandy to be interviewed by my zone leader for her baptism and I met her for the
first time with my
zone leader. Sandy passed her interview with ease and I then asked her why she
hadn’t joined the
Church earlier. Sandy’s answer was simple. She said, “No one asked me!”
Sandy was baptized before the month ended. However, Brother Tapley failed to
keep his end of the
bargain. Elder Rowley and I didn’t get our pizza. Within two weeks, both Elder
Rowley and I were
transferred to new areas. Sometime later I asked the elders that were
transferred into our area about
our investigators. They told me that eighteen of the twenty-one were baptized
into the church. Elder
Rowley went on to become an assistant to the mission president. It is ironic
that the only baptism
Rowley had on his entire mission was Sandy. I finished my mission with
twenty-one baptisms and I
often wonder why Elder Rowley and I weren’t allowed to reap the harvest of our
endeavors in
Garden City, Michigan.
I often fell that it may be because we were foolish in making the bet
and the Lord was teaching us a lesson about the importance
of the souls of our brothers and sisters.
My next assignment was Battle Creek, Michigan. The ward was very good and we
received many
member referrals. As time went on, Elder Easler and I received a call from a
sister that had just given
birth to a baby boy with a serious heart defect. She requested we come
immediately to the hospital
to give her baby a blessing. Elder Easler and I had a fast prayer and drove to
the hospital. When we
arrived we had a short conversation with the mother. She was very upset and she
told us she was an
inactive member of the Church. We then talked to the doctor and he told us the
baby was going to
die and that it was just a matter of minutes before the end would come. The
doctor told us that the
baby had a hole in it’s heart and that if it wasn’t for the fact that it was
bleeding so badly the baby
could have been flown to Lansing where their facilities and doctors could
operate on the baby’s heart.
The doctor said he didn’t know very much about the LDS Church but he hoped that
our presence
would help the baby’s distraught mother. Elder Easler and I gave the baby a
priesthood blessing. We
had to do it by laying our hands on the incubator. I pronounced the blessing and
we talked to the
mother and father a few minutes and then left. We went back to our apartment and
said another
prayer asking that the baby would be healed.
The next day, we received a call from the doctor. He told us the baby’s heart
stopped bleeding fifteen
minutes after we left. The baby was flown to a Lansing hospital and according to
the doctor, the
surgery was a success and the baby was doing fine and should be able to lead a
normal life. The
doctor asked how he could learn more about the LDS Church and we got hold of the
elders in his
area and gave them the doctor’s name. I don’t know if the doctor joined the
Church or if the baby
recovered fully, because we were transferred.
My next assignment was Evansville, Indiana. While there my new companion and I
were teaching a
sister that was divorced with a four year old daughter. This sister was a
secretary at the college and
she didn’t have very much money. After the third lesson, this sister became
touched by the spirit.
However, her family was against her taking the lessons and said they would
disown her if she joined
the Church. We tried to set an appointment for the fourth discussion and she was
hesitant and told
us she would give us a call if she decided to continue with the discussions.
The next day, my companion and I drove approximately forty miles to contact a
person that had
visited the Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah. On our return trip we took a
different route home and
checked out some small towns in the area we might tract in. On the way, we
stopped at an antique
shop and while we were in the shop, we placed a Book of Mormon in the book case
containing
antique books. The Book of Mormon was marked and had our names in it. This
antique shop was
off the beaten track and I don’t think Elder Gough or I could have found it
again without a great deal
of trouble.
About two days later the sister we were teaching called us and requested that we
come and talk with
her. When we arrived, we found the sister crying. When we asked her what was the
matter, she
handed us a Book of Mormon with our names in it. I was sure she had decided to
stop taking the
lessons and was giving us back the copy we had originally given her to read.
However, it was soon
made clear to us that she wanted to join the Church. This sister explained that
she was gaining a
testimony of the gospel when her family started giving her a problem about
joining the Church. She
told us it was very upsetting and she prayed for a sign. On Saturday, her day
off, she decided to go
for a ride in the country in her car to think over her problem. She said she
found herself at an antique
shop. She went inside and as she was looking at the antiques, she found a Book
of Mormon on the
book shelf. She was beside herself when she opened the book and saw our names in
the book.
This sister was crying because our Father in Heaven answered her prayers in an
unmistakable manner.
This sister joined the Church and was also given a lesson in tithing. Before she
joined the Church she
had another crying session when we explained the law of tithing to her. She
showed us her budget
and explained she couldn’t pay the tithing and her other bills.
Being the kind of elder that wouldn’t let a little problem
like tithing stop a baptism,
I testified to her that if she paid her tithing first
and trusted in the Lord, that all would be well.
I went on to promise her that if she paid her tithing, that Elder Gough would
pay any bills she
couldn’t pay. Everybody had a good laugh. This sister paid her tithing and
before the month was out,
she had been given extra jobs from a professor that needed some research papers
typed. The next
month, she had been given a raise in pay and because the professor was so happy
with her work, he
recommended her to other professors that needed typing. In two months, she had
extra money that
she didn’t have before.
I have a strong testimony of the gospel and the principles taught therein. I
have strong a faith and I
have a strong testimony of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and I
know this is the
Lord’s true church and that it has been restored to us in these last days. We
must live its principles
and teach them to our children. I have seen too many evidences of it in my own
life, in the lives of
others and while I was serving a mission for my Lord to believe otherwise. It is
my hope and desire
that as members and non-members of His church, we remember to thank our Heavenly
Father for His
Son Jesus Christ and all He has done for us. For His gift of the atonement which
gives us the
opportunity to return and live with our Heavenly Father again.
These things I know.
Officer (&RM) Olin W. Tefft Badge #2800
If you are or were a police officer,
soldier, fireman
or wife, mother, father of such or some other branch of emergency
personnel
and would like to share an unusual testimony building experience with
others,
please contact us for details at
Samuel@ldscops.com
or use the link on the front page of this site at
www.LDSCOPS.com
Thank you and God bless,