I wish I'd known her.
Josie Fox was a tall, lean country woman who'd been a little wild in her youth, but outgrew it. Just five years ago, she became the first female deputy in the Millard County Sheriff's Office, and on Monday hundreds of cops from all over Utah and beyond came to Delta for her funeral.
Growing up in Lynndyl, a town about 10 miles from Delta, Josie's parents taught her ranch work and hunting. She played Little League baseball (better than most of the boys, her sister said) and ultimately would master welding, jujitsu, motorcycle racing and karaoke.
And oh, said her sister, Sandi Greathouse Ables, you'd be silly to even try to beat Josie at leg wrestling.
Her zeal for life, friends said, was eclipsed only by her generosity and compassion for those in trouble or in need.
I met Stephanie Meinhardt, who had known Josie "forever," in what seemed like an endless line for Josie's viewing Sunday night.
"She knew how to make us laugh, no matter what she was going through," Stephanie said.
"She was there when my husband got sick." A miner, he'd come down with a disease that all but ruined his lungs.
Josie was there when Stephanie's oldest boy got in a car accident, and she helped her younger son work through his debilitating depression.
"She pretty much saved his life," Stephanie said. "She had this thing about connecting with our youth that no one else could do. She was a second mom, security for the kids.
"It's something other moms wish they had" Stephanie said, wiping her eyes. "She was my fearless angel."
Her mother's "wild child," Josie was no stranger to the principal's office during her school years, and got into trouble with weed and meth as a teenager. She got pregnant with Spencer, her firstborn, and later had Hunter, her daughter. She married and divorced, worked in various jobs, but always had a yen to be a cop.
Unbeknown to her, she'd caught the attention of former Millard County Sheriff Ed Phillips, who wanted a woman on his force. There was something about her, even though she'd become "well-acquainted with my staff."
At last they talked, and Josie set out to be a sworn officer. She made it in October 2004, Phillips recalled during her funeral, and she enforced the law -- with a bit of generosity, depending on the circumstances. And she made it her business to put shoes and coats on those who had none, and food on the table if someone was hungry.
In 2007, Josie married Doug Fox, whom she always introduced as the "perfect man."
But all cops know how dangerous their work can be. Josie was shot and killed at about 1 a.m. on Jan. 5; the man suspected in her death is charged with capital murder.
But for a few hours on Sunday night, a slide show at the viewing gave a sense of her in pictures: Josie as a little kid with mischief on her face; Josie at branding time or with the deer she had bagged; Josie astride her motorcycle; and on the day she married Doug Fox.
And the one I liked best, when she finally became a deputy, her eyes a vivid blue and a proud thumbs-up just below the service weapon on her hip.
"She had a pedigree," Phillips said, "and the spirit of a mustang."
I don't know how people like Josie get to be the way they are, and maybe that's for the good. I do know that if I'd met her in life, I'd have wanted to be her friend.
Ever so sadly, Stephanie said, "We just lost ours."
