"Zebra, End of Watch"

Today they did my dad’s final call over the radio.

I knew it was coming. I knew the words they would say. I knew they would read his badge number and officially close out more than thirty-five years of service. But nothing prepared me for hearing “end of watch” attached to my dad’s name and badge number.

"Zebra #... End of Watch."

It felt like the air left my lungs.

My dad has been a police officer for my entire life. Not just a police officer - he was also a teacher and a community staple. Entire generations of students knew him and lit up when they saw him in the hallway and at the grocery store.

And honestly? That’s who he’s always been to me too.

When I was younger, he was my very best friend. He was my role model in every sense of the word. The person I measured goodness and safety against. I loved him even when he told embarrassing stories about me and my sister in front of entire classrooms. There was always something comforting about how proud he was to be my dad, even if 11-year-old me wanted to disappear into the floor while he talked.

In high school, I wrote a paper about what he meant to me, and it got a 98%. Later, I used that same paper as my college application essay. That feels strangely fitting now, because so much of who I became was shaped by being his daughter.

When I was little, I thought it was completely normal to walk through empty school hallways late into the evening while my dad worked. I was so excited to get to help pass out pencils at his students' graduations. I got to pick out stuffed animals in the basement of the police department. I thought I was the absolute coolest to get dropped off at school in a police car. Teachers knew me before I even walked into classrooms. Principals waved at me in the hallways.

There was something so magical about all of it when I was young. So much of that shaped my childhood.

Kids adored my dad, and he adored them right back. Not in the performative way people sometimes talk about first responders - no, he genuinely loved those kids. He remembered names, stories, families, and even sometimes exact graduation essay lines.

After my husband and I moved back to my childhood town, there was always this comfort in knowing my dad was nearby. Somewhere right down the road in a police cruiser, if I needed him, I knew he would be there. Even now, it’s hard to explain how safe that made the world feel sometimes.

Of course, there were sacrifices too. He missed some birthdays, special events, dinners, and holidays. There were nights we worked around his schedule because that’s just what police families do. As a kid, I didn’t always understand it and sometimes I was admittedly angry about it. But now that I’m older, I understand something I couldn’t fully see then: It was an identity that mattered deeply to him. His Community mattered deeply to him.

This wasn’t just a job he clocked into. It was part of who he was.

Which is why watching this chapter close has been so painful.

Retirement is supposed to feel celebratory, right? People bring cake and clap and talk about relaxing and sleeping in. But when someone spends thirty-five years building an identity around serving people, protecting people, showing up for people… you don’t just literally take the badge away and expect there not to be grief attached to it.

I know there is grief there. Even if he won’t say it yet. Even if he can’t.

I can see it in the quiet moments and the way he talks about memories. I can see it in the heaviness sitting underneath everything right now. I think a part of him is still trying to process what it means to no longer be Officer every single day. And maybe selfishly I am too.

Because this feels like the end of an era in the deepest sense of the phrase. Not just for him, but for our whole family. Some of my most vivid and favorite childhood memories exist inside who he was in that uniform. The radio chatter. The school hallways. The patrol car. The stuffed lion sitting on his desk. The pride I felt every time someone said, “Oh, you’re that Officer's daughter.”

Today, hearing that final call, I realized a career can end and a title can change, but the impact someone leaves doesn’t just disappear when the radio chatter goes quiet.

Somewhere out there are grown adults who still remember my dad standing in their classroom teaching. (And okay maybe even pulling them over...) But kids also felt safer because he was around. Students and staff trusted him. Families knew him. People's lives changed when they met him because he chose this work over and over again for over thirty-five years.

That matters.

And no final call can erase that.

So here’s to you, Dad.

Thank you for over thirty-five years of service. Thank you for the countless lives you impacted from the countless kids who loved you. And thank you for being there for your little girls, who always felt safer knowing you were nearby.