When I awoke last week to the news of the death of Deputy Josie Greathouse Fox, my thoughts raced, not just for her family and my hometown of Delta, but to my own relationship with her.

I first met Deputy Fox as she placed handcuffs on me. I had the good fortune and privilege to be arrested by her. I am aware that these words are seldom used in relation to any arrest, which under most circumstances is a little-desired experience.

But Josie Fox was unlike most law enforcement officers. And though arrests for the theft of prescription drugs may, unfortunately, be common in a state with the highest level of prescription drug abuse in the nation, I quickly discovered that Fox treated me with a level of concern and compassion both uncommon and distinctively her own.

After being revived from a prescription pill overdose, I was picked up at the hospital in Delta by Deputy Fox and transported to the Millard County Jail in Fillmore. The entire ride, for the better part of an hour, she took the time to talk to me extensively about the opportunity I was being presented to turn my life around and the potential that still awaited an addict who, for all intents and purposes, had lost all hope.

In her capacity of enforcing the law, she took the time to add the human element -- the conveyance of hope, support and even love for all those who fall on the other side of the law. It is the kind of support perhaps only one familiar with struggle can convey.

I will never forget that conversation and the impact it had on my life. She related to me on a very personal level her own struggles and how the principles of redemption can be applied to each of us if we find the resolve to practice a new, responsible way of living. In short, the kind of life she lived.

As I have followed the coverage of her death, I discovered something else -- that I was far from alone in my interaction with her and her sense of devotion to the community she not only had pledged to protect, but that she clearly loved. I have heard and read the stories of others she confronted or arrested, those she took that extra time to help and to inspire to a better life. I have read the words of her mother, attesting to how Josie took her own journey in life and used it for the benefit of others. I learned that I alone was not the special one.

There is a human fabric to Millard County -- a pattern all its own. Josie personified that tenacious but tender care with a skilled weaver's strength and resolve, and it will never be lost on a soul like mine.

I literally went from working in the West Wing of the White House to living as a homeless crack cocaine addict on the streets of North Salt Lake and now am in the happy journey of reclaiming my life. To me, Josie was an angel on that path.

I will graduate from college in May from Southern Utah University, where I hold elective office as well as a full-time job at a mortuary where I routinely work with law enforcement officials and am no longer a burden to society.

For that, in no small way, I have Deputy Josie Greathouse Fox to thank.

Russell A. Kennedy is a senior majoring in political science at Southern Utah University, where he is president pro tempore of the SUU Student Association Senate. E-mail: senatorkennedy0@gmail.com