BLUE LIGHT SPECIALS

"The badge gave me authority to enter those places. It did not give me the ability to leave them unchanged."

For thirteen years, Andy McDaniel answered to County 109.

Behind the wheel of a patrol car, he traveled thousands of miles into situations that were sometimes dangerous, sometimes heartbreaking. and occasionally so ridiculous that nearly thirty years later they still make him laugh.

There was the nine-year-old car thief nobody could catch because nobody knew they were looking for a child. The grandmother ready to send her grandson to prison over the last red Jolly Rancher. The new computer that didn't survive its first night in the house.

But there were other calls too. The ones that followed him home.

The innocent victims. The frightened children. The violence. The losses. And the moments that forced a sheltered young deputy to confront realities about people-and himself-that no academy could have prepared him to face.

Blue Light Specials is more than a collection of stories from behind the badge. It is the journey of a young man discovering that the people we encounter are rarely as simple as the moment in which we meet them.

Some of these stories will make you laugh.

Some may break your heart.

But together, they tell the story of the miles, the people, and the lessons that changed a life.