A grief-stricken mother of a fallen Colorado police officer sent a text message to her son’s old number, and was stunned when she received a reply.
Now she’s found a source of strength and comfort in the most unlikely of places, thanks to a turn of fate and the kindness of a fellow officer.
“Every day, it hits me like a ton of bricks, when I can’t text him,” Carol Adler told KUSA News in Denver, Colorado.
“We’re just that close. Everything that happened in his life was in my life.”
According to the Colorado State Police, Trooper Cadet Taylor Thyfault was killed on May 23, 2015 while on a training ride with another state trooper.
As detailed in a press release from the department, Thyfault was killed after he was struck by a vehicle on Colorado Highway 66 near Weld County during a high-speed pursuit while attempting to lay spike strips.
Thyfault’s last act, according to police and witnesses on scene, was to shout to a nearby tow truck driver to take cover. It was an act the man would later credit with saving his life.
“And if you asked him, he’d do it again, because he sacrificed himself, for someone else,” Adler told KUSA. “He lived, he dreamed and breathed that.”
Adler says she and her son were extremely close: when they weren’t meeting in person to catch up on each other’s lives, they would text each other constantly throughout the day to stay in touch.
Adler says she was the last person her son had communicated with prior to his death.
Unwilling to let go, Adler said she continued to send messages to her son’s old number expressing her grief and sadness.
“One night in particular I was having a really bad night, telling him I love you and I miss you and please come see me,” Adler said.
Then something Adler never expected: she got a reply.
It turns out her son’s old number had been assigned after his death to another officer: Sergeant Kell Husley from the Greeley Police Department, who had received a new work phone that summer.
“So I sent a text back and identified myself, and said ‘I’m with the Greeley Police Department, and I don’t think your texts are going where you think they are,'” Sergeant Husley told KUSA. “And then it was like the breath got sucked out of me, because the reply was about Taylor and the accident.”
Husley offered to have his number changed, but to his surprise Adler requested that he not, and an unlikely friendship was formed. The veteran officer said he felt an instant connection to the fallen cadet.
And Adler says her connection with Sergeant Husley has been a source of strength in the midst of her grief.
“It’s like I always have a little angel in my pocket now,” Adler said.
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