Cat Jumper was a pre-law student at Wofford College in October 2020 when her father, Sgt. Conley Jumper, was killed during a traffic stop on Interstate 85. She was planning a career in criminal law. What she didn’t plan on was the way the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office stayed with her family long after the funeral, or the letters that kept arriving from people her father had helped during 28 years of service, including a grateful grandmother who took the time to write.
She went to work for SLED in Greenwood, and in 2025 she joined the sheriff’s office herself. Now Deputy Jumper wears her father’s badge and patrols some of the same neighborhoods he served. Residents recognize her name tag and stop her to share memories, sometimes stories her family had never heard, sometimes a tough conversation that somehow ends with “he was a cool guy.”
Last October, a school security center in Taylors was dedicated in the sergeant’s honor. Cat and her mother Sara treat the anniversary of his death as an ordinary day, deliberately. If you ask us, that’s its own kind of strength. Have you ever been on the receiving end of a kindness like the ones Conley Jumper left behind? We’d like to hear it.
