Colby Allen is a U.S. Army veteran and law enforcement detective from Moore County, North Carolina, whose career has spanned patrol, SWAT, and criminal investigations.
Colby Allen recognized the address before dispatch finished reading it. It belonged to a family friend, and what he found that day set in motion years of anger, a marriage he nearly damaged beyond repair, and eventually, one week before this conversation, a baptism alongside his four year old daughter. This is a story about carrying weight from a job most people never see the cost of, and what it looks like to finally put it down.
Colby Allen grew up in Moore County, North Carolina, the oldest of three, raised by a police sergeant father and a nurse mother. He describes an unremarkable childhood: football, wrestling, a brief stint learning guitar at a church youth group he never took seriously. At eighteen, in the wake of a breakup, he walked into an Army recruiting office on impulse and signed up for the infantry. He had never flown on an airplane and hated the idea of it. He joined anyway.
Basic training nearly ended before it started. Stress fractures in his hips put him on crutches, and his name was struck from the graduation roster before he had actually failed. He pushed through a twelve mile ruck march in the rain, unable to feel his legs by the end, determined not to go home a quitter. His father, a police sergeant himself, gave him his blood rifle at graduation, confirmation, Colby says now, for years spent as what he calls "a pretty terrible teenager."
"I am fighting from a position of victory rather than fighting for victory."
Colby deployed to Afghanistan in 2018 as part of an infantry uplift supporting Special Forces operational detachments with the 4th Infantry Division. He describes his first firefight almost matter-of-factly, laying suppressive fire on a compound from behind a remote turret controller, and then, without much warning, the loss of two Green Berets and an Air Force combat controller to a roadside bomb. He was twenty years old. Faith had nothing to do with any of it at the time. "The only time I prayed was before going out the gate," he says, "and it wasn't really a relationship. It was a deal."
He came home, married young after a whirlwind courtship, and was medically separated from the Army in 2020 in the chaos of COVID. Law enforcement followed almost by default. What came next was a decade of real highs and real lows: high speed chases, a spot on a SWAT team, cases he is proud of closing, and a run of calls that left lasting marks, including a teenager's suicide, and years later, a call to a house he recognized before dispatch finished reading the address. It belonged to a family friend. By the time Colby got there, the man had shot his girlfriend and turned the gun on himself. Colby had to tell his mother.
The years that followed were marked by anger he did not fully see in himself, at work and at home, where he describes being "a bad husband" without realizing it. A miscarriage. The sudden death of a new family dog that became, he says now, an outlet for grief he had never let himself feel over the child he lost. And then, one week before this conversation, a decision: Colby was baptized by a close friend and previous Rugged Path guest, with his four year old daughter asking to be baptized right alongside him. The panic attacks started days later. He does not call it a setback. He calls it confirmation that he is finally fighting for something real.
"I am fighting from a position of victory rather than fighting for victory."
"His mom shows up, I have to show up and tell her, hey, your son's dead and I couldn't stop it."
"I didn't know how to love until she was here. I didn't know how to love God either."
"Satan doesn't know what you're thinking, he only knows what you do. He can only see your pattern."
"Whatever, man, the worst you can do is kill me. I know where I'm going, so we're good."
"Don't waste that time. There's only one thing that matters."