On June 11th, 2011 Tom Tomasheski was driving home with his family after watching the sunset at Lake Erie. His wife, Tammy, was in the passenger seat. His two kids, Danielle (13) and Tommy (11), were asleep in the backseat after a long day. It was any ordinary day. As they passed the Grafton Correctional Institution southbound on SR 83 their lives were seconds away from exploding, never to be the same again.

As they passed the prison, a scumbag drunk driver crossed the center line and hit them head on. Not a glancing blow but the kind of head on crash that makes both cars stop where they are and spin off the road. It was the kind of crash that you have nightmares about. The other car comes across the center line so fast there is no time to react, barely enough time for your brain to register that two headlights are about to hit you. Tammy and Tommy were dead before the cars stopped rolling. Tom and Danielle’s bodies were devastated. For weeks, nobody could guarantee that they were going to make it, and some humanely questioned whether they should.

Tom and Danielle did make it and they are doing as well as can be expected I guess. I often think about Tom and how strong he must be for Danielle. I would like to believe that I could find that strength, but I truly don’t know. If something happened to my girls.......Jesus. I don’t even want to say it out loud. I get sick to my stomach typing the words.

People see this bracelet on my spotlight from time to time and they ask about it. I bought it during a fundraiser for the Tomasheski’s. I decided to hang it on my spotlight so that when I am on my way home after a long day and see a car weaving, or run a stop sign, or speeding I don’t just ignore it. This bracelet reminds me that another family, heading home after any other ordinary day, may be 20 seconds in front of the guy that is weaving going by me. I may be the only thing between them ending an ordinary day and their reality exploding into an unimaginable nightmare of screaming, twisted metal, and broken glass.

I may be the only thing that can save their lives and sometimes I need to be reminded that stopping that last car is far more important than anything else I have going on that day. There is very little tangible feedback in this job. I have never had someone come up to me and say “Thank you. He was about to kill my family.” In fact, the people that were almost killed have no idea they were almost killed. No one knows. I have no idea how many families have been spared due to the cars I have stopped. Maybe none, maybe 100. Every time you pass a cop with a car pulled over in the other lane and the driver is being tested for DUI, say a prayer and thank whoever you pray to that that cop wasn’t so consumed with his own life that he stopped that driver. He was coming toward you and you could’ve been the ultimate target.

When I consider just going home, this bracelet is my tell tale heart. It puts the memory of the Tomasheski’s in me.

I wish I could have been able to stop the scumbag’s car that night.

I wish none of you ever knew the Tomesheski name.

I wish they ended their ordinary day in an ordinary way.