Thought I'd drop this here, brought a tear to my eye...
Things recently came full circle for Natalie Young, a new deputy with Colorado's El Paso County Sheriff's Office.
Young was only six-weeks-old when she was rescued by an Escondido police officer from a California home where her mother had been using meth and neglecting her baby, according to the
San Diego Union-Tribune.
Officer Jeff Valdivia was on a routine call to arrest a parole violator at a residence where conditions were so dire that he filed for protective custody for an infant he encountered there.
"I knew the mom was using meth, she showed all kinds of signs of drug use," Valdivia told
CBS News. "The baby, Natalie, was underweight and the house was torn up."
"You hope there are no gaps in the system and you hope everything works the way it's supposed to," he added of the decision to remove the child from the home.
Just weeks ago, Valdivia learned what became of the child when he received a call from Natalie's adoptive mother, Shelley Young.
Shelley informed Valdivia — who is now the sergeant for Escondido Police's community-oriented COPPS division — that Natalie was preparing to graduate from El Paso County Sheriff's academy.
Shelley then invited Valdivia to pin Natalie's deputy badge at her graduation ceremony last month.
"It was an incredible high," Valdivia told the
Union-Tribune. "You make the best decision you can, you hope you wrote a good report and you hope the system is going to work. From there on, it's out of your hands."
Shelley said Valdivia inspired Natalie to become a deputy.
"Natalie fought through it and she made a choice, you know, to set her moral compass to be good and to help others," she told CBS News.
At the Sept. 23 graduation, Natalie and Valdivia met for the first time since that day 22 years ago.
"It was a huge honor," he said, according to CBS News.
"He is going to be there when I need it," Natalie told the outlet, "and I am very excited about that."
