LAYTON

When his old friends from the Roy Police Department came to arrest him, Boyd Wilcox wasn't surprised.

For two years, he'd been waiting for the moment when somebody figured it out. Finally, he could face his guilt and his shame.

For months, Wilcox had replayed the scene in his mind: How he'd put on his best Sunday suit and overcoat, strolled into his hometown bank with a gun and quietly demanded cash.

He remembered how proud his mortgage officer had been a week later, when he'd shown up to write a check to make up for missed payments and save his family's home from foreclosure. "Good job, Boyd," the officer had told him. "We're thrilled that you could turn this around."

Wilcox didn't feel very proud, but it was a relief to know that his wife and kids wouldn't have to live on the streets. Six hundred dollars was all he'd owed when the first foreclosure notice had arrived.

For $600, he'd put his life and reputation on the line.

Twenty-four years later, Wilcox, now 69, slides behind a table at the Cracker Barrel restaurant in Layton to share his story of remorse and redemption over a Free Lunch of chicken-noodle casserole and corn bread.

He and his wife, Marie, still live in the same house that he saved from foreclosure in 1985, when poor health, unemployment and an addiction to Demerol led the former cop to take desperate action.

Once an officer who had worked for the Los Angeles and Roy police departments, Wilcox's troubles began years after he quit the force to become a truck driver. He developed severe stomach pain and doctors concluded that he had a cancerous growth in his esophagus. Numerous surgeries left him addicted to pain killers, depressed and unable to find a new job when he was fired by the trucking company.

"We started losing everything — the apartment building we owned, our two cars," recalls Wilcox. "The money my wife earned waitressing didn't stretch far enough and we fell behind on the bills. When the foreclosure notice came, I made up my mind I'd do whatever it took to keep the house. I'd gone to the FBI school for bank robbery, so I thought I could pull it off. Clearly, I wasn't thinking straight."

A few days after the robbery, when their local paper ran a photo of the suspect taken by a surveillance camera, Marie Wilcox confronted her husband. Although the robber's face was obscured, he was wearing an overcoat just like Boyd's. "Is this you?" she asked.

"I couldn't answer her," says Wilcox. "I didn't have the guts to admit what I'd done."