In a law enforcement tradition, officers often travel to support their own in times of tragedy.
When her plane touched down at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport last week, Keyla Live didn't know what to expect.
The city had seen so much heartache in the preceding days -- five police officers gunned down in the street and fellow cops pummeled by grief, as the country tried to make sense of how this could have happened.
So, when the 35-year-old detective from the Union County Prosecutor's Office arrived in Texas on Thursday for the funeral of Sgt. Michael Smith, she was struck by how fervently the city embraced her.
They greeted her in the airport. They thanked her for traveling all the way from New Jersey. They asked to take pictures of her and other officers who had come from across the country to pay respect to their fallen brothers.
"Everybody was very supportive and grateful that such a large amount of people were there to mourn with them," said Live, a 10-year law enforcement veteran.
Live was among scores of off-duty New Jersey police officers who voluntarily went to Dallas last week, a nationwide tradition among law enforcement eager to support their own in times of tragedy. The departments, sometimes funded by donations, send representatives to cities and states across the country when manpower allows.
One person was particularly thankful for officers' sojourns in Dallas. A woman identified by the New York Post as Diane Thurman, of Amarillo, Texas, was sitting near Live and nine other visiting officers in Bob's Steak and Chop House when the group got a little loud.
An officer approached Thurman, 42, and told her they were in Dallas to support the families of the shooting victims.
Toward the end of their meal, Live and her companions learned they wouldn't be footing the $1,000 bill. Thurman had taken care of it and had left a note on the receipt: "There are no words to express our gratitude! God keep watch over you!"
The officers, who hailed from New York, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, were floored.
"I don't even have words to explain how we felt to have a complete stranger that's not from our state do such a gesture," Live said.
'A surreal experience'
When Point Pleasant Beach police officer Peter Andreyev goes to work every day, he leaves a wife and two kids at home.
What if, one day, he didn't return?
Andreyev, 43, was part of a delegation from the New Jersey State Policemen's Benevolent Association (NJSPBA) that flew to Dallas for four of the five funerals. The union brought a trailer filled with water and food for officers standing in the Texas heat.
As Andreyev sat in Watermark Community Church for two of the services, he felt a sense of familiarity. The officers thousands of people had come to mourn could have been him or any of his colleagues in law enforcement.
"It kind of hits home when a lot of these guys were around my age or things like that," said Andreyev, who has served with Point Pleasant Beach police since 1992. "It was personally moving because I can see the similarities between my friends and these guys."
Of the three funerals Sgt. Michael DeGrazio of Montclair sat through, watching the fallen officers' kids speak was the hardest part. There were few dry eyes as the kids remembered their dads.
Even outside the funerals, signs of what Dallas had endured were unavoidable. The hotel where DeGrazio stayed with three fellow Montclair officers sat squarely in the middle of what remained an active crime scene last week.
They saw police tape roping off the spot where the shooting took place, bullet holes in architectural columns, broken windows and officers still guarding the area.
"I literally felt sick to my stomach," DeGrazio said. "You wish you could do something to help, but we were just there for support."
But beneath the city's pain pulsed a sense of unity, of support and of all being in this as one. Every seat was filled in the church, one of Texas's largest. Police officers from across the United States and Canada packed the building. Funeral processions, lined with people waving American and Texas flags, stretched for miles.
"It was just a surreal experience," Andreyev said.
Equally surreal was the response from Dallas residents who stopped police officers on the street to thank them for their service. In his 24 years working in law enforcement, Andreyev had never experienced that degree of praise.
"Their hospitality came out," he said. "It's almost as if their sense of community pride and state pride was on display for all of us that were from out of town."
Lt. Andy Montalvo of the Perth Amboy police went to Dallas with two of his fellow officers. He saw the 1,500-mile pilgrimage as a chance to stand in solidarity with police men and women across the country.
The trio left a Perth Amboy Police Department patch among the photos and teddy bears that comprised a temporary memorial outside the Dallas Police Department -- a symbol that they had been there, and they had seen.
Bound for Baton Rouge
Andreyev was waiting for his flight back to New Jersey when he saw the news: three officers killed in Baton Rouge, La., after days of protests in response to the fatal police shooting of Alton Sterling.
Now, the NJSPBA is making plans to send officers to a second string of police funerals in a matter of days -- a sign of the kinship the officers feel with law enforcement killed in the line of duty. No matter where you work, Andreyev said, the job is about the same.
"It's just a hatred toward police officers that these individuals [shooting police] have exhibited," Andreyev said. "The officers here in New Jersey are watching over their shoulders a little bit because God knows, if it can happen there, it can happen anywhere."
To DeGrazio, being a police officer these days feels eerie. He knows that his wife is nervous, that his 9- and 11-year-old kids worry. He signed up for this job, but they didn't.
DeGrazio's family had some advance warning of the dangers of being a cop: His dad was a police officer in Newark for almost 30 years. Still, DeGrazio said, it's hard to tell kids the very nature of the job means anything can happen.
"I feel myself looking over my shoulder now, being more aware of my surroundings," he said. "It's a little bit nerve-wracking. We don't get a lot of support right now."
Although the spate of national violence has left police officers rattled and uneasy, they insist that they still have a job to do.
They've made a promise "to protect and to serve."
Marisa Iati may be reached at miati@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @Marisa_Iati. Find NJ.com on Facebook.