31-01-2025
Okaloosa County School Resource Officer leaves lasting impact on students, receives Smiles Behind the Shield Award
DESTIN, Fla. (WKRG) — A school resource officer in Northwest Florida has been making a difference in student's lives for decades.
One student still remembers his impact 17 years later. That deputy's name is Tom Henry.
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Henry has been with the Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office for nearly 30 years. Eventually, he found out that his calling wasn't out on the streets but inside the schools.
'When you're on patrol, you go to call, to call to call, and you don't really [have] a chance to find out what's really going on in a household unless you're at that house all the time,' said Henry. 'So I felt there was a different need and I needed to be somewhere else to try and help maybe kids.'
Henry was actually News 5's Shamonee Baker's school resource officer when she was a student at Choctawhatchee High School, but that's not why WKRG presented him with the Smiles Behind the Shield Award.
Around Christmas, Henry received an email from a former student detailing how he saved her life.
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The person who graduated in 2008 said Henry saved her from an overdose of pills at school. She reached out to him to tell him how much of a positive impact he had on her.
'You find students in this job, and you try to dedicate that time and that effort into them, the ones that you know, might be struggling in life, and she was one of those students,' Henry said. 'When I got the email from her, it just surprised me and it took me all the way back to that moment when, you know, I had to save her.'
That former student said she's been sober for over nine years now.
'To know that she's doing great things with her life, she's got help, and she's actually helping other youth in her community where she's living right now…. It just goes to show the impact that we have working in the schools,' Henry said.
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Part of the email read:'I owe you a huge hug and an endless amount of gratitude for you saving my life that day.'
'You are a gift to not just the community and the children you touch but to many others around you.'
Seventeen years later, Henry is still doing what he loves. This time at a new school, Destin High.
'Officer Henry has been truly, truly a delight, and I really wouldn't want to do this job without you here,' Destin High School principal Dr. Diane Kelley said.
Last year, Henry received the Florida Association of School Resource Officers Lifetime Achievement Award, and now he can add WKRG's Smiles Behind the Shield award to his list of achievements.
Congratulations and a job well done.
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