Commentary: Newport officer helps grant a stranger’s dying wish

It’s easy to get weighed down by all the awful things people do to each other. Sometimes it seems like that’s all we hear about.

This is a story about something positive that someone in the Newport Beach community did to help a friend of mine who was dying.

She had quit dialysis and was given weeks, maybe days, to live. She had a son in his 30s who had left Nebraska years ago and had lived a hard life in California. He was homeless and an alcoholic, and she had heard from him only a few times over the years. He had not been home in six years. She wanted to hear his voice one last time and say goodbye.

Finding him was going to be hard, but I didn’t realize how hard. He had no Internet presence at all.

He was living on the streets and was not known to frequent shelters. Calls were made, but no one knew him. Her son had been arrested a number of times for a variety of things, including public intoxication and assaulting an officer. So I took a chance at contacting the last officer to arrest him in hopes of at least learning where he might hang out.

I reached Det. Tom Monarch of the Newport Beach Police Department. I was wary of the conversation, given the history of my friend’s son and the difficulty this agency had had with him.

To my great surprise, Monarch and the NBPD were more than willing to help. Given the circumstances, I had somewhat lost hope that we would find him before his mom passed. Monarch searched high and low and finally located him in a neighboring jail.

His mom was ecstatic to hear that her son had been found and that he would be calling. I thought this would be the end of things and thanked Monarch for his help, but it was not the end.

With only days to live, my friend waited anxiously by the phone. She had the account set up for the collect call, but the call never came. Three days came and went. I tried calling the jail, but since he was a recent inmate, it was difficult for me to locate him or determine a calling schedule. I had to call Monarch back and ask for more help.

Knowing the gravity of the situation, the detective again jumped right in, made contact with the facility and personally got her son to the phone to have that last conversation with his mom. Monarch didn’t have to, he wasn’t required to, he had no obligation to, and given the past contact, he certainly could have been unmotivated to, but he did.

And for this my friend got her dying wish from a person who had every reason not to get involved. She and I — and many others — are eternally grateful. Her son got the gift of a final goodbye from the last person he might have expected it from.

There are good people in this world, doing good things. We just have to look around us to see them. Thank you, Detective Monarch and the Newport Beach Police Department, for taking the time to grant this dying wish.

ANGELA L. BURMEISTER lives in Bellevue, Neb. Her account was corroborated by the Newport Beach Police Department.