Las Vegas police officer Casey Clarkson arrived home at 5 a.m. Monday, dried blood on the collar of his white T-shirt and a square bandage below his left cheek.
“Hi honey,” his wife, Tara, said.
“Hi baby.”
“Are you OK?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine.”
She hugged him gently.
“I almost broke down,” she later told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “because I didn’t think I was going to be able to do that. I kind of melted in his arms.”
She was so happy to be with the man she loved that she snapped a selfie and shared it with a friend.
Then on Wednesday, the 32-year-old gang unit officer who had been working overtime at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival was seated quietly next to first lady Melania Trump at a news conference inside police headquarters.
Tara Clarkson watched proudly on TV.