Editorial: A gift of a new beginning

Monday, Dec. 25, 2006 | 7:23 a.m.

Metro Police Officer Brooke Newton found John Winn in the worst of situations. Newton, part of Metro's Community Oriented Policing Services, found Winn in July after a drug deal gone bad. Winn was addicted to methamphetamine and, as Abigail Goldman recently reported in the Las Vegas Sun, he had been stabbed and hit with a brick.

Newton suggested taking him to a shelter. Winn would have run if he weren't so badly hurt, but after listening to Newton for 30 minutes, he agreed to go to the Las Vegas Rescue Mission.

"Officer Brooke caught me at a time when I was down and out. I had nothing left in my pocket. No money. No nothing," he said. "And that was the best time she could have found me."

Newton says she will ask a homeless person only three times if he wants to go to a shelter. If the person doesn't go after that, "they haven't hit rock bottom."

Winn, 38, had. He had been kicked out of other programs, but not this time.

He called Newton after graduating the shelter's drug treatment program to thank her for saving his life. They met earlier this month, and neither recognized the other. Winn, not much more than skin and bones when he entered the program, is 70 pounds heavier.

Winn received the same reaction from his children, whom he hadn't seen in three years.

"We were like a family again," Winn said. "It was like nothing ever happened."

Thanks to the compassion of a police officer, Winn has his life back. That is quite a Christmas present.