Sherri's Turn

A couple of years ago I set out to do something I'd been wanting to do most of my life. Write a book. The idea for this particular book – The Skeleton and the Lantern – an off road mystery for kids, had been roaming around inside my head for about 15 years.

It was New Year's Eve 2019 when I determined that my resolution would be to finish the book I started 15 years earlier. It was one of those rare New Year's resolutions that I actually kept.

I wrote a chapter a night. And if you read the book, you'll see it has really short chapters. That's because I told myself I had to write a chapter a night. I didn't say how long the chapter had to be, just that I had to write one.

One of the things I discovered as I got into the crafting of the story is that suddenly I needed to be a whole lot of different people. Or at least know about these people and what they would do or say in certain situations.

One of the characters in the book was a deputy sheriff. As I wrote scenes that included the deputy it occurred to me that, thankfully, I'd had very few encounters with law enforcement myself, and really had no clue if what I was imagining they would say or do was an accurate portrayal of the situation. Turns out just the year before we met Larry Hammers, a deputy sheriff, at the race track. At the time he had his K9 partner Black with him.

Not only did he live in and patrol the rural area where we were racing flat track, he raced his quad there a couple times, though his real passion was desert racing. Each time he drove into the track, he'd stop by our pit and visit and then make his way around to chat with other racers.

When I told him about the book project, Larry was more than happy to answer all my questions. He listened patiently as I described scenes and made suggestions that either confirmed they were okay or helped tweak them for accuracy. When I asked if he had suggestions for a name for the deputy, he shared the sad story of the death of his K9 Black and said it would mean a lot to him if the character could be named after him. Not only did we use his name, but we included a photo tribute to Black in the back of the book.

As we talked further, Larry even offered suggestions that went beyond the law enforcement scope of the book. When he discovered that the main characters rode dirt bikes, he suggested the book needed a quad rider also. So, before the story came to an end, readers discover that the deputy sheriff in the MotoMysteries series races quads in the desert. Larry jokingly suggested that we give him the number 37 (which was his number before he won a championship and switched over to #1K).

Apparently it took him by surprise when he read the book and discovered we had done just that. He texted a message once he finished reading it: "Sherri, thank you for the book and paying tribute to Black, you have no idea how much I miss him. I have to tell you that you made me cry when I read that Deputy Black was a desert racer on a quad....#37. Thank you."

At the very next race, Larry presented us with a beautiful wooden cross he handcrafted. We had discovered over the course of the months discussing the book that we also shared a mutual faith in Jesus. We knew that we, along with others who have committed their lives to Jesus, would one day be going to heaven.

We just didn't know he would go so soon.

October 2019. Little did we know that two short years later we’d be using this photo to remember Deputy Larry Hammers by. We were blessed to get to know him. Pictured: Steve and Sherri Kukla with Larry Hammers and the granddaughter, Summer, photobombing

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