By MIKE CORN
mcorn@dailynews.net
For John "CookE" Fross, there are two undying loves in his life: His wife and his career in law enforcement.
Now 68, he met his lifetime sweetheart, Beverly, at 15 and married her at 20.
"And still happily married," he said Friday.
He spent 34 years in law enforcement, a career that commenced after a seven-year stint with the Hays Fire Department.
If you can say he's ever left the field.
Fross, who worked as an officer for both Fort Hays State University and Hays police departments, continues to frequently transport prisoners around the state for the Ellis County Sheriff's office.
He's also been known to fill in at the county jail or on the security detail at the Ellis County Courthouse.
But it's not wise to bother him too much on Thursday evenings when he's busy with perhaps his third love -- spending a bit of time at a billiards table.
Ironically, it was the billiards tables at the Golden Q that brought him full circle from cop-to-retirement-to-cop.
Soon after he turned in his badge at FHSU, he spent four to six hours -- sometimes more -- playing snooker with other retirees. First it was a few days a week and then it turned to perhaps every day.
"Honest to God, that's all I did for a year and half," he said.
Until that fateful day when he went home and sat down.
"Then I said all I'm doing is sitting here waiting to die," he recalled saying.
That didn't set well with him.
A couple days later, he saw an advertisement in The Hays Daily News; Frito Lay was looking for help.
To put it simply, he applied and was hired on the spot. He soon took another, then a third and then a fourth part-time job.
"Then I got the job as prison transporter," he said. "So I was working five part-time jobs."
That was fine, for a while, until it started taking all his time.
"Then my wife started complaining," he said.
And, the jobs were conflicting with his ability to take on the task of moving prisoners.
The notion of "once a cop, always a cop," rings true for Fross.
And that's exactly how he came to receive the bronze award for valor from the Kansas Association of Chiefs of Police.
Then-Lt. Don Scheibler, now chief of the Hays department, received the gold award for pursuing and being shot at twice by a fleeing burglar on Dec. 23, 2007.
Fross heard the shots -- two from the burglar and one from Scheibler -- as he was getting ready for bed.
"I heard this boom, boom boom," he said. "Three shots. I've been range master for 30 years, I know it's not a car backfiring."
He rolled off the bed he was sitting on, crawled to his closet and pulled out his service revolver, complete with a laser sight.
He stepped outside and saw a person laying on the driveway next to his house and a police officer nearby, shouting commands to the suspect to put his hands up.
Fross had the laser pointed at the suspect's head.
When the man on the ground didn't put his hands up, Fross lowered the laser slightly, and flicked it back and forth.
"As soon as he saw that, his hands went up," he said. "I let my dot do the talking. My red dot."
The man was armed, but Fross didn't see the gun.
"If I would have seen that, there's no doubt in my mind that I would have killed him," Fross said.
Later, while working in the jail, the man approached Fross.
" 'I just want to thank you for not killing me that night,' " Fross recalled him saying.
One of the bullets fired that night struck Fross's home and remains embedded there.
He's now down to a single job, transporting prisoners. That, and the job of organizing a pool tournament at the Golden Q.
"We had the first one Thursday night since they opened back up," he said of the Q's remodeling.