Sharper Point: Loss of DPS trooper is shocking — even for the jaded

They are not exactly like you and me, but if you’ve spent much time with law-enforcement folks, you can easily come away with that impression.

They are fathers and sons, wives and daughters. They may go to parent-teacher conferences, or play basketball at the gym. They might like a good steak and a couple of beers on a Friday night. They may be dog people or they may be cat people.

However they may appear to be just like us, how they are different is what is truly incredible about them.

If you have a job that includes interacting with the public, take a second to think about how weird it would be to know that any time you meet a client or a customer that they might hold hate in their heart for you — simply because of what you do.

Or what it would be like to regularly show up to business meetings with people who are having the worst day of their life — leading them to act in the most irrational ways.

Or knowing that the appliance service call you’re headed to has a raging customer behind the front door who’s violently angry that things aren’t going his way.

Now, imagine doing that job. Every. Single. Day.

It’s why I always try to give people wearing a badge a break — even if they’re giving me the stink eye. It’s not personal. The level of caution they use in their interaction with me may be completely colored by some punk-ass they just had to put up with.

With the loss of Arizona Department of Public Trooper Tyler Edenhofer, who was shot to death Wednesday night along I-10 (probably by one of those crazy people I just described), I’m reminded that law-enforcement officers never know when a life-or-death moment can come.

It may be after decades of service.

They may never face a truly violent suspect.

Or, that moment may come less than three months after they graduate from the Arizona Law Enforcement Academy.

That was the case for DPS Trooper Tyler Edenhofer. The 24-year-old U.S. Navy vet was just a couple of days away from finishing his training.

My God. I’m sure no one in law enforcement ever imagines their number is going to come up just as their career is starting. 

Losing someone as young as Edenhofer must come as a huge shock to his fellow troopers and brothers and sisters in law enforcement. 

And these are people who believed that they couldn’t be shocked — because they’d already seen it all.

God bless Trooper Edenhofer and all of the men and women of law enforcement.

They are unlike us — in the best ways possible.

Follow @JimSharpe