Pink underwear, prisons and a Christmas posse

Last night in the midst of the Christmas rush, I took a night off of the flurry of Christmas preparation to spend the evening with a small group of people, one of whom was Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

I have met him many times, but you really get to know someone when you spend hours with that person in a small, intimate setting over food and drink.

Since my background is in psychology, I am intrigued a lot more by the makeup of someone's mind than I am his or her politics. This goes for liberals and conservatives alike.

Joe speaks pretty forthrightly.

I didn't realize Joe was 81. He enlisted at 18 to go fight in the Korean War. He arrested Elvis once.

He doesn't care about protocol. He doesn't smile or do the proverbial arm around the person next to you for pictures. He stands there, stiff as a board, for pictures with a scowl. I can't count the photos I have with Sheriff Joe where he looks like he hates me. Maybe he does.

His mother died in childbirth because she refused to abort him. He was raised in Massachusetts by his Italian Catholic father, who was a grocery store owner. He has been married for 56 years to his wife, Ava.

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He told my husband last night that the secret to a happy marriage is to "find a wife that doesn't ever, not one time, complain that you work too much or that you put your job before her." Despite his bravado, his wife, Ava, he told me, is "the smartest decision he ever made in his life." Joe might have been re-elected half-a-dozen times as sheriff, but he wouldn't make it a moment as a marital therapist!

I am intrigued.

Not in a warm, fuzzy way, but more in a "What has our culture lost when this man is gone?" way. Here is just some of what Sheriff Joe and I discussed last night over the course of the evening:

1) Famously, Sheriff Joe Arpaio puts his inmates in pink underwear because they were selling their underwear on the black market, and they couldn't do that with pink underwear – there isn't a big black market for them. Well, there wasn't before Sheriff Joe made them a trademark. But he admits the real reason is because most of the inmates hate pink. And they are lawbreakers, after all, who are not entitled to fashionable underwear.

2) Joe has used his constitutional authority to deputize a 3,000-person posse. They answer directly to him, they are all volunteers, and they cost taxpayers nothing. He dispatched his armed volunteer posse to patrol the schools. "I'd rather get the shooter before they get into the school," he told me.

3) He uses his posse during busy mall seasons to protect shoppers, another target for criminals with guns. In other districts, malls are gun-free zones. In Maricopa County, Joe makes sure they are filled with plain-clothed, highly trained volunteers carrying semi-automatic weapons to protect the shoppers. Oblivious Christmas shoppers have no idea that those around them in the mall are Joe's posse, armed and ready to protect them.

4) He removed porn and cigarettes from the jail. "They're prisoners. They don't need it," he said. And the taxpayers pay their health care, so they have no business messing it up. He made that clear.

5) He brings all the military veterans together to paint the cells red, white and blue. The media talk of Sheriff Joe "rounding up military inmates who fought for this country" and how he "humiliates them." He puts a flag in every cell and, if any inmate messes with the flag, they go on bread and water. He told me that his inmates say the Pledge of Allegiance and sing the national anthem each day. I wondered, "Could we make him director of education so we can bring that kind of patriotism back to our schools?"

He does this because the military veteran inmates, he told me, are great leaders. Like any leaders in any institution, the leaders matter to the safe keeping of the people in the institution (the jail). He also wants to be certain they have time together for moral support, because many of them are dealing with combat-inflicted Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and other mental issues. He wants them to have a skill so that when they get out of jail they can have a new lease on life. He teaches them the skills they can use to do contract painting when they are out. The American Civil Liberty Union calls this inhumane. How is that humiliating to an inmate who could otherwise be lying around looking at porn?

6) He saved Maricopa County $600,000 by eliminating milk for inmates, and he took away cable and plays audio of the brilliant Newt Gingrich through the jail halls, instead. "Maybe they'll learn something," he suggests.

7) He instituted chain gangs. In keeping with women's rights, he was the first known law enforcement officer in the history of the world to put women in a chain gang. He marches his chain gangs up and down the main streets of Maricopa County "so mothers can drive past them and say, 'See why you want to be good, Johnny?'"

8) He loves animals, so he made his inmates vegetarian. Now they eat "soy and stuff." I bet that has the ACLU in a real conundrum.

9) Joe told me that he wrote a letter to my governor (California Gov. Jerry Brown), who is turning thousands of violent criminals loose, and told him he ought to use tents. Joe used tents for his inmates. Joe said, "If it's good enough for our soldiers …" He said it works well. Joe also mentioned that Gov. Brown could use the old, retired battle ships that line the shores of San Diego's harbor to house prisoners. Sheriff Joe thinks Brown could use some common sense when choosing to turn those (like a convicted rapist, with more than 100 rapes on his record) loose to commit their crimes again!

10) When we asked what he thinks of profiling, he said, "I'm not a racist. I am an equal opportunity guy. Wish I could catch a couple of Canadians!" He brought down the house with that one!

But maybe you had to be there. I wish you were. I wish the whole country could have been there to see this dichotomy of human compassion and setiferous fearlessness that so clearly defines this man.

At 81, the sheriff is often asked who will continue his legacy of common sense when he is gone.

"Nobody. There is only one of me," he replies.

He might be right.

I am not sure the next generation, or any of those to follow, has any concept of the kind of grit that generation has.

Sheriff Joe, and many of the World War II generation were made of a different fiber. My grandpa was a bomber pilot in World War II, and he died this year. This will be our first Christmas without him, but I wear his flight wings on my arm every day. My grandfather was a lot like Sheriff Joe: honorable, gruff, distant, uncomfortably cocky with a heart of gold.

As I look at people today, they are so different from that generation. I think we might be losing the heart of our nation when they are gone.

Today we talk a lot about compassion, but we aren't really willing to get in the trenches and get dirty alongside a brother. We gladly hand that duty over to government, which screws it up 100 percent of the time.

We read a lot, but we don't do a lot of acting upon what we know. We are "sheeple," in so many ways.

We don't have courageous leaders. When one comes along, the media set about destroying them (Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, Louie Gohmert, Michele Bachmann, etc.). Then we wonder why no one seems to have political courage anymore. It's a death wish.

Yes Sheriff Joe is gruff and grandiose, but he genuinely cares about kids, animals, veterans, God, country, family and, I would guess most of all in some ways, his inmates and their futures.

At 81, he has no intention of retiring. After being investigated by everyone from the DOJ to the United States district courts, and sued by the ACLU, the sheriff doesn't need a semi-automatic to convince me he is fearless.

This generation could take a page from the book of Sheriff Joe. I am not sure where kinder and gentler has gotten us – we seem rather merciless and impotent in our ability or courage to fix what is wrong with our world today.

Given the choice, I would raise sons like the awkwardly social, a bit arrogant, heart-the-size-o-Texas Sheriff Joe and my crusty, gruff World War II bomber pilot grandpa (despite their faults and rough edges), and less like the limp-wristed, selfie-taking, low-bowing Barack Obama and the pure gutless wonder of John Boehner.

That is what I learned last night. My boys are getting more guns and a posse for Christmas.