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in his one-man car on patrol. Over those years, Bill gradually but consistently put on weight, so that the lanky youth who graduated from Washington State University disappeared behind added pounds. He weighed more than three hundred pounds now.
    In 1997, Bill said he wanted a change of pace, and asked to be assigned as a court security officer in the Issaquah District Court. He had worked that area on patrol for years and wanted to get off the road. Issaquah is a mountain foothills town in the shadow of Snoqualmie Pass, located more than fifteen miles from the King County Sheriff’s Headquarters in downtown Seattle. It was an easy commute, however, from the Jensens’ home in Newport Hills.
    “I thought court duty would be kind of fun,” he commented. “I tried to stay on day shift as I got older—as a matter of it being easier with the family and sleep and everything.”
    His new assignment began on January 1, 1997. Jenny was almost twelve, and Scott was nearly eight. With their father working a day shift, they hoped to see more of him. Sue, too, wondered if Bill’s new assignment could somehow change the dynamics in their home in a positive way. At last they would all be living on the same basic schedule; she and the kids wouldn’t have to be alone during nighttime hours, and he could coach on weekends.
    The King County Journal, the east side’s newspaper, chose Bill Jensen as their “Hometown Hero” about this point in his career. Bill had met an injured ex-cop in Australia ten years earlier when the Jensen family was vacationing there. Bill and Graeme Dovaston became long-distance friends after that, and kept in touch with each other. Ironically (in light of what lay ahead for Bill Jensen), Graeme Dovaston had been struck by a car when he was a working officer, and his leg was broken in seven places. That was in 1973. Infection set in, and after a fifteen-year struggle, his leg had to be amputated. When Bill Jensen learned that a prosthetic leg had failed Dovaston and that his long-awaited trip to America had become a nightmare as he tried to maneuver on a wooden foot fastened with straps that etched wounds into his hips, Bill took action.
    Bill lobbied two Washington State firms to donate parts for a prosthetic leg that worked, and then organized a fund drive to raise the rest of the $19,000 needed for the remarkable artificial limb. After twenty years of pain and disappointment, Graeme Dovaston was able to lay down his crutches and walk once more, thanks to Bill Jensen.
    Bill, in his King County Police uniform, smiled broadly from the pages of his local paper as he held a picture that showed his Australian friend walking with ease. Once more, Jenny and Scott Jensen were very proud of their dad.
     
    Still, the Jensens’ children worried about the conflict in their home. They loved both their parents, and when Bill and Sue Jensen fell into arguments, Jenny and Scott tried to mediate, too young to understand their basic differences and the disappointments each of their parents felt in a marriage that sometimes seemed doomed to failure. Sue, the bubbly optimist, kept trying to bring Bill into a relationship in which they shared responsibility, while Bill, the sullen, self-focused pessimist, resisted—pulling further away. Sadly, it wasn’t a particularly unusual situation in many American marriages.
    Sue wasn’t afraid of Bill, not at all. She had long since pushed her dorm adviser’s warning back into her subconscious mind. She had almost forgotten her injuries at Bill’s hands when Scott was a newborn, as well as those that came later.
    She knew her children loved their father devotedly, and that Jenny and Scott wanted their parents’ marriage to succeed. Bill was still coaching Jenny’s teams, and he joined Scott in father/son Indian Guide activities. He and Scott still rode their motorcycles together, Bill on the big “hog” and Scott on one geared to his size.
    Every time Sue thought about leaving