Sheriff Mark Lamb

My wife and I were that, I was out at a dinner and I'd been out wrapping, been doing some Christmas shopping.

My wife was out wrapping presents at our house.

And I get home about 30 minutes later, 8.30 at night, I get a knock on the door.

And...

We opened the door and it's the sheriff from the neighboring county, Sheriff Benzone, two of my chiefs and two guys from Gilbert PD.

And my chief, who's known my kids for a long time since they were little kids, he just looked at me and all he could say is Cooper and the baby are dead.

In an instant, I lost my 22-year-old son, my 11-month-old granddaughter, and my soon-to-be daughter-in-law died a few days later.

She was like a daughter to us because we had had her.

She had come out of drugs, and she lived with us for two years while we brought them out of drugs.

And so all three of them died in the blink of an eye to a guy driving in the influence of alcohol and drugs.

At that point, my wife and I weren't interested in doing anything.

I wasn't interested in running for Senate, wasn't interested in running for sheriff.

I didn't even want to get out of bed.

We were just, we were devastated.

And so finally about three weeks after we do the funeral, and I don't remember what it was, but somebody said something to me.

And just like that, boom, it sparked me back in.

And what I realized, I looked at my wife and we knew immediately this is what we had to do.

And what it reminded us is there is no guarantee for tomorrow, and the only thing you take with you in this life is what you do.

And so,

we looked at that experience and said, we're gonna get up, we're gonna dust ourselves off, and we're gonna move forward, and we're gonna do what the Lord's asking us to do.