At about 1:25 a.m. on July 30, 2024, Deputy Sheriff Rafael Wordlaw was sitting in a car while a friend pumped gas. Then an armed robbery began. Wordlaw was off duty, but the badge had shaped the kind of person who could not simply watch someone else face danger alone. He intervened, and the violence that followed took his life at 31. Wordlaw served the Cook County Sheriff’s Office – Department of Corrections for four years and six months. He was assigned to Division 6 of the Cook County Jail. Behind those service facts was a human being who made one final, devastating choice: to…

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