Lifestyle

Heartbroken Mother Continues to Text Her Son After He Dies. Then She Gets a Response.

When Carole Adler lost her son, Taylor Thyfault, the boy whom she said “lit up a room,” she was beyond devastated.

Every so often, knowing full and well that he was gone, she would text her son for comfort. And now when she texts him, she gets a response.

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WLTX reports that as a teenager, Thyfault dreamed of joining the Army. Mission accomplished. By age twenty-one he was an Army veteran.

After serving in the Army, he joined the Colorado State Patrol.

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As he was training to become a cadet, he and his colleague, Trooper Clinton Rushing, were investigating a wreck when they received a call about a high speed chase heading their way.

Though they set out stop sticks, they were unable to prevent the driver from bombarding the crash sight.

As the vehicle was approaching, Thyfault called out to a tow truck driver on the scene and told him to move out of the way. The driver crashed into Thyfault and Rushings.

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Thyfault died on the scene and Rushings was critically injured. The tow truck driver’s life was spared— Thyfault had saved his life.

“And if you asked him, he’d do it again, because he sacrificed himself, for someone else,” Adler says. “He lived, he dreamed and breathed that.”

Adler and Thyfault texted frequently — she was the last person he texted before he died — so it was incredibly difficult for her to stop the communication.

A few weeks after his passing, she began texting his number; she knew she wouldn’t get a response but doing so brought her a sense of comfort.

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Then one evening she received a text back. Greeley Police Department Sergeant Kell Husley’s new phone number happened to be Thyfault’s old number.

“I sent a text back and identified myself, and said ‘I’m with the Greeley Police Department, and I don’t think your texts are going where you think they are,’” Husley explains.

But Adler replied that maybe they were. Instantly connecting with Husley, she told him her story and refused Husley’s offer to get a different phone number.

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Husley understood, he too felt a connection with Adler and Thyfault.

“He’s eager. He’s excited, and he’s willing to do a job that can sometimes be really unthankful,” Husley says. “[Thyfault is] still trying to make a difference.”

Adler now finds comfort in knowing the impact her son had, and continues to have, on the world.

And Husley is thankful for what the serendipitous experience has brought into his life.

“It’s like I always have a little angel in my pocket now,” he says.