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Oct 12, 2009 10:51 pm US/Central
Widow Of Fallen DPD Corporal Returns To Duty
By Arezow Doost
DALLAS (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ―
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Dallas Police Lt. Regina Smith, widow of DPD Sr. Cpl. Norm Smith.
KTVT / KTXA
It's been nine months since Dallas Police Department Senior Corporal Norm Smith was shot and killed. For his widow those months have been unspeakably long and difficult, but now she's starting a new chapter.
Lieutenant Regina Smith is now patrolling her husband's old streets and trying to make sure he's not forgotten. "It looks like a slow night," Lt. Regina Smith said. "I'll come here and see people who recognize me and say 'that's Russian's wife'."
On Monday night, after being briefed, Lt. Smith grabs her keys and heads out. She's patrolling the Fair Park area and driving up and down the same streets her husband once watched over. Her husband, Norm, was nicknamed the "Big Russian", around Southeast Dallas.
Sr. Cpl. Smith was fatally shot in early January, after trying to serve an arrest warrant with other members of the Dallas Gang Unit. "I've been to the very door where my husband was killed," Lt. Regina Smith said emotionally. "I placed my hand where I thought my husband would place his hand and I fell to my knees."
Sr. Cpl. Smith was killed just five miles from where his widow patrols now. She now meets people her husband once knew. "Mr. Davenport. How is he doing?" Lt. Regina Smith asks a man at a car wash on MLK Boulevard.
Ricky Pryor says hello to the lieutenant. It turns out Pryor knew Sr. Cpl. Smith. "He was my friend. He always checked on me," Pryor said.
For Lt. Regina Smith the decision to come back to patrol was not a hard one. She was the Chief's Administrative Assistant for four years and says everyday she would have to pass by her husband's office, just to get to hers. "I did it for eight and a half months, but each step was difficult... difficult for me because I know I'm facing reality that he's never coming back," she explained. "Especially when I would leave to go home, I know he's not going to be there when I get home."
As Lt. Regina Smith copes with her husband's death she says, "I feel a calmness about walking the streets out here I think that's coming from Norm's strong presence."
Night after night the lieutenant tries to make Southeast Dallas safer and those long nights without her husband more bearable.
Now, Regina Smith is hopeful the community, which was her husband's home away from home, will watch over her too. "If I end my career here I will be at peace with that. This is where he started his career this is where his career ended."
Lt. Regina Smith started patrolling about two and a half weeks ago and brings 22 years worth of experience with her.
As she patrols the streets, Lt. Regina Smith is also trying to raise money to buy the Dallas Gang Unit a ballistic shield. Lt. Smith says she believes the shield, which costs about $3,000, would have saved her husband's life.
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