When a life in active motion is suddenly cut short, the stark empty space left behind hits hard. Such was the impact of the loss of Granite Quarry police officer David “Dav-I” Earnhardt.

Earnhardt died Oct. 25 after a brief, fierce battle with cancer, leaving a lifelong career in public safety in mid-stride behind, and the friends of a lifetime and cherished family stunned.

His cancer battle was a private matter, but his career in public service was not. As a teenager, he was a junior firefighter with Rockwell Rural Volunteer Fire Department, but in 1990, he became a volunteer with both the Rockwell Police Department and the Rowan County Sheriff’s Office. Many of his friendships began long before.

The man who would be his boss at the end of his career, Chief Todd Taylor of the Granite Quarry-Faith Joint Police Authority, knew Earnhardt from the time they were in middle school.

“In high school, I was his bus driver,” Taylor said. “I was two years ahead of him and you know back then, seniors could drive school buses. He and his two sisters rode my bus, and two years later he took my spot driving.”

During his career, Earnhardt worked for a number of agencies including China Grove and Landis as well as Granite Quarry and Faith. He also worked for Rowan County Rescue Squad and as a 9-1-1 dispatcher.

“A lot of people may not have known that Dav-I had a great sense of humor, because when those blue lights came on, he was all businesses,” Taylor said. Earnhardt’s favorite spot, to eat and to watch for speeders, was the A&L Mini Mart in Faith. “He was my No. 1 ticket guy, my great traffic enforcer,” Taylor added.

Granite Quarry Mayor Brittany Barnhardt said that she met Earnhardt 16 years ago when she began her work with Rowan County EMS and Rowan County Rescue Squad. When their paths circled around and the two began working together again with the town, Barnhardt said that she felt honored that the man who fit every definition of a public servant chose to call Granite Quarry home.

“Dav-I was unassuming and modest about his acts of service, often performing them privately without any expectation of recognition, and even going out of his way to avoid it. He was a willing, capable and seemingly tireless professional who gave so much of himself to others. His humor, easy grin and friendly demeanor made him exceptional in every role he filled,” wrote Barnhardt on Facebook.

When he first got sick, Earnhardt told Taylor he needed to take some time off, but said he’d be back in November. Taylor took his cruiser, had it washed, cleaned and the tank filled and “we parked it at his house and I told him it would be ready and waiting for him whenever he wanted.” But it was not to be.

The department parked Earnhardt’s cruiser in front of the Granite Quarry town hall for several days before his funeral, and people were invited to leave tributes on the car.

“We were humbled and shocked by the flowers and notes left. I can’t tell you how surprised I was by some of the people who left notes and cards. But it shows you how many lives he changed,” Taylor said.

He said Earnhardt’s sister Tammy Yon left her job and moved in to take care of Earnhardt and said her strength “absolutely blows me away.” In addition to Yon, Earnhardt left behind his “son Dustin, Yon’s husband Nathan, his sister Cynthia Newton and her husband Robbie; nieces and nephews, Robbie (Ben), Brandon (Madison), Felicia (Westin), Connor, Wyatt, Asher, Matthew and Hudson, his special dog, Wyatt and an extensive family of brothers and sisters from emergency services,” as listed in his obituary.

When Earnhardt was diagnosed, Yon said she promised her brother, who was 11 years her senior, that she would not leave him, and she didn’t.

“He died in my arms,” she said, and on the day of the funeral, she rode in the fire truck with him to be with him until the very end.

Growing up, she said she was the baby, Earnhardt was the oldest, and Cynthia eight years ahead of her and three years behind her brother, and so she “was on their shirt tails.” When she was young, they were so far apart in age that they didn’t spend a lot of time together because they were not in the same place. But her brother loved watching wrestling, and “I would be his wrestling dummy because I was so small he could toss me around.”

She said Earnhardt loved NASCAR so much that he eventually became a street stock car racer himself, and she became his spotter. The two spent a lot of time in Dillon, S.C., and Concord at the track, and one of her strongest memories is the time he wrecked on the track.

“He went head-on into the wall,” she said. “It knocked the wind out of him and for a minute he couldn’t talk.” Before he got out of the car, Yon was expressing her distress with the driver that caused the wreck fairly vehemently, and when Earnhardt did get out, he had to calm her down.

“He talked about getting back into racing and I told him I’m getting older and my temper is shorter, and he might not want to explain why he has to bail his sister out of jail,” she laughed.

She said while being his constant caregiver was hard at times, it also meant the two had some long, heart-to-heart talks, and “I learned a lot about him that I didn’t know, and we became close in a different way.” For that, she will always be grateful. An LPN, she had cared for a cousin at the end of last year in his death, and swore after that she would never be a hospice nurse, but once Earnhardt was diagnosed, she knew she would do it again for him.

“The one thing we keep hearing over and over is that people are going to miss his smile, and looking back now at photos, I can see what they mean. His smile is contagious,” she said.

Knowing Earnhardt’s love of racing, Rowan County Sheriff Travis Allen said when he first learned that Earnhardt was not well, he initially thought he might have been injured in a crash while racing. When he learned Earnhardt had cancer, “I was shocked.”

Allen’s memories of Earnhardt are from their teenage years, when they worked the same summer job.

“We washed school buses together,” he said, laughing. “There were about three of us, and we’d do everything teenagers could do to clean those buses up. And those are the memories I turn to, squirting each other with the hose and throwing sponges at each other and playing as teenagers do.”

The two went on separate paths after high school, but when Allen came back and got into law enforcement, “the first person I did a ride-along with was Dav-I,” he said. The two covered different areas in their work, for different departments, and they became work acquaintances over time, but “I will always go back to those innocent childhood days when I think of him.”

In a final ride and tribute, Earnhardt was carried on the back of a Rockwell fire truck, at his request, on a procession that took him past all the places he had worked, with a final pause in front of the flag pole with flags at half staff in front of the Granite Quarry town hall, before proceeding to the First Baptist Church in Rockwell. Pastors Joe Spry and Ben Vickrey led the service, and both spoke of Earnhardt as a man of absolute faith, true conviction, who loved his family. They both reminded Dustin that he was the “apple of his father’s eye.”

“Dav-I was about his community,” said Spry. “He was not about position, stature or social status, he was about doing what is right.”

Yon said Wednesday would have been Earnhardt’s chemotherapy day, and when Wednesday morning came, it was hard not to get up and begin to get him ready. “I needed to get out and do something, because it’s hitting today. It’s kicking in that he’s not here.” She has inherited Earnhardt’s dog, Wyatt,  and said that has given her a job, to take care of the dog, and as the days go by, she knows there will be other things to address. Her parents, she said, are having a tough time, because it’s hard for a parent to lose a child, and for her mother, this is the loss of her first born and her only son. “We’re making sure to take care of them, spend a lot of time with them,” she said.

Meanwhile, Earnhardt’s cruiser will be parked in his usual spot outside A&L for a little while yet, as a tribute to Earnhardt’s commitment to the safety of the community and in memory of his favorite spot, Taylor said.

“It was an absolute honor to call him friend, and I will miss him dearly,” said Taylor.