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The dispatch call came through at 2:17 a.m., and I thought it would be just another welfare check in a building I’d visited several times before. But when I walked into that freezing apartment and heard a baby screaming, I had no idea I was about to make a choice that would define the next 16 years of my life.
I’m Officer Trent, 48 now, but back then I was 32 and still carrying grief like a second uniform.
And when you’re already bracing for heartbreak, you don’t expect to find hope in the middle of it.
Two years before that night, a house fire took everything from me.
I thought I’d already seen the worst humanity had to offer. Break-ins where families were terrorized in their own homes. Car accidents with victims who didn’t make it.