A hero officer protected me — and died for all of us

Phoenix police Officer Leonard Kolodziej would have died for me, if that had been asked of him. Instead, he died for someone else. For us all. It began when my boss at the The Arizona Republic contacted the police. An anonymous caller who’d been trolling me for weeks left a message on my voice mail, saying: “Hey, Montini, you should tell your little girl not to leave her purple and green bicycle in your front yard. … Someone might steal it.”

It happens, although most of the creeps who leave messages or send emails or write letters aren’t so persistent. In one of the man’s messages, he described the car I drove. In another, he said I should consider altering my route home so I would be less easy to follow. This was in 1991. After he described my daughter’s bicycle, the authorities were called.

The police decided to increase patrols through my neighborhood.

I had to tell my neighbors why they might notice slow-moving police cruisers passing by several times a day. The reactions varied. It was a little scary to some. A little creepy for others. It was also, for some, a little cool, a little exciting, as if there is an element of danger to a job in which much of one’s time is spent sitting in an office, typing.

I let them believe it. I let myself believe it — a little.

During one of the patrols through my neighborhood, the officer passing by my family’s house noticed something unusual.

It might have been the way the car was parked in the driveway. Was the trunk open? What about the door to the house? Was it ajar? Something seemed off.

From inside the house, my wife, Anne, noticed the patrol car slow down, then stop in front of our driveway. Had the officer seen something? Was there a problem? Just as the officer was about to get out