A Hero's Prayer Is Answered

By Mike Jones, Panama City, Florida

As appeared in

Twenty-six years in law enforcement and I never had to use my gun. That’s the way it should be. That’s the way I always hoped it would be.

Like I tell graduating cadets at the police academy: “The most important people in your career are the ones who love you, the ones who helped you get here today. Your job is to go home to them every evening. Don’t get yourself into anything you can’t get out of and stay safe for the ones you love.”

Well, it doesn’t always work out that way, as I learned one chilly afternoon last December at the school district headquarters in Bay County, where I’m head of the school police department.

December 14 was supposed to be a vacation day for me. I’d taken off the last week and a half before Christmas to get ready for a toy giveaway program I help run in town. The day before, weather reports had showed a big cold front moving in.

The superintendent had asked me to work one more day to make sure that all of the district’s buildings were prepped for the freeze (we don’t get a lot of cold weather down here on the panhandle).

I spent the morning driving around to schools checking on pipes. That afternoon I was at the district office. Four floors below me the school board was meeting in the ground floor boardroom. My cell phone rang.

“Mike,” said a female voice I didn’t immediately recognize, “there’s someone with a gun in the boardroom and we can’t tell if it’s real or fake. Please get down here!” She hung up.

Training overrode my shock. I raced down the stairs. It can’t have taken more than a minute to get down to the ground floor but suddenly I felt like time had stopped and I was running through a tunnel.

My heart beat fast, my muscles tensed. I saw in a flash all my years as a police officer.

My dad had been an auxiliary policeman and my uncle had worked for highway patrol. Straight out of high school I’d worked odd jobs till I could afford the academy. I’d joined the Panama City department the day I graduated.

I’d seen it all and worked every beat from patrolman to sergeant to homicide detective. I’d retired, then come back for more with the school district after a stint on the school board.

I’d fired my gun plenty of times in my career—at the shooting range. Mostly I’d learned how to stay true to that advice I gave to new recruits. I kept safe. I talked shooters into putting down their guns. I never did anything rash, never tried to be a foolish hero.

For over 20 years I’d come home every night to my wife Colleen. I’d never had to ask God whether I’d done the right thing shooting someone. I’d never felt the dread I was feeling now. Please, Lord, keep us safe.

The boardroom was behind a pair of double doors just down the hall from the building’s main entrance. I wasn’t wearing a police uniform—as an administrator I rarely do—but I did have a small .38-caliber pistol in a holster clipped to my khaki trousers. I drew the gun and cracked open one of the doors.

Straight ahead, past rows of upholstered seats with room for about 150 people, sat six members of the school board at a long desk.

Ginger Littleton, the only woman on the board, wasn’t there. The rest of the room was empty except for a tall, heavyset man in a dark sweatshirt, jeans and tennis shoes pacing around in front of the board members.

The man carried a large automatic pistol in his right hand.