That morning he had been depressed. It was 2013 and he was reluctantly dragging himself along to a 'future leaders' Rotary conference in Melbourne. He had been hitting the booze hard for a while, was struggling to find any purpose in life and, if we're being honest, a pain to live with.

Then a Canadian lecturer at the conference named Jennifer Jones turned it all around with a simple message.

"She said we've all got a story to tell, find your story and tell it," Brian said. "I knew I had a story. I was a policeman who had to give up the job he loved, and slipped into depression and alcoholism."

It was all he needed.

But let's start at the beginning.

Brian's world started to unravel when the long-time senior constable at Maitland Police slipped on a wet floor at work. Simple as that. He had faced guns, been confronted with knives, driven at breakneck speeds in police pursuits, worked on high profile historical crimes ... but a wet floor? Come on.

He was off work for 16 weeks, and when he finally returned it was on restricted duties. He could barely walk and was given a medical discharge.

"People would ask me if I love the job and I say I wouldn't have stayed 28 years if I didn't," he said. "I loved it all right."

The downward spiral kicked in quickly. At his darkest hour, Brian was seeing a clinical psychologist, drinking two cartons of beer a week, a bottle of Wild Turkey whisky, plus half a dozen bottles of wine, and that's not taking into account whatever social engagements he and wife Carol would have.

"I would lay on the lounge, not helping out or doing any housework."

When Carol challenged him he would say what did she expect, he couldn't walk.

"You walk all right when you want another beer," she'd hit back.

He was a cop, damn it, and he missed it ... even though there were bad days there too. Like the time he was on a high speed pursuit - "doing 160km/h, maybe 180 ..." - when he crashed on the roundabout at Maitland Station.

"I wasn't injured too bad, but I reached across to my partner not knowing if he was alive or dead. It was a terrible feeling. He was worse than me but he managed to swear at me, which was a good thing."

Or the time, at that very same roundabout a few years later, in light rain during morning peak hour, he saw a major crash just ahead. It would be another 90 minutes or so before he learned that the deceased driver was his sister Pam's boy, Adam. His nephew.

"I had to go to the morgue to identify the body, and after that I went home and started on a bottle of bourbon, writing this email to the Maitland Mercury about how quickly life can be lost for no reason. When the bottle was empty I hit 'send'."

Next morning, having second thoughts, he rang then editor Liz Tickner - he wrote a regular police column called True Blue for the paper and knew her personally - and asked for the story not to be published.

Too late: "It's on the front page".

It was called 'A Policeman's Plea' and became the catalyst for a very strong road safety campaign that played a key part in the Mercury being awarded the prestigious Country Press of NSW EC Sommerlad Memorial Award for Editorial Leadership and Community Involvement.

Fast forward a few years - he's gone to Melbourne, been inspired by a speaker he's never met but who he now calls a friend, is back in Rotary, off the booze and life is good.

On a well deserved holiday to Vanuatu he and Carol are visiting the southern island of Tanna, and asked the guide Veronica Iak if she would show them her village among the coffee plantations.

When they arrive, her seven-year-old son Nurak Charley is crawling in the dirt, his club feet obvious. One foot is backwards, the other sideways. The villagers ignore him.

"The village felt Charlie's deformity was a punishment by the devil for something Veronica had done. Charlie was shunned - he wasn't hugged, he wasn't toilet trained, it was very sad," Brian said.

He and Carol returned home, pulled whatever strings they could and got Rotary to agree to fly Charlie and Veronica to Maitland where they would stay at their place and see what medical options were available. It was "bloody hard I can tell you", Brian says, and there were times they needed a break for a day or two, and other Rotarians would step up.

Brian would drive Charlie to all his medical appointments in Newcastle - and there were plenty. Some heartfelt pleas for assistance meant John Hunter Children's Hospital paediatric orthopaedic surgeons and physiotherapists had volunteered their services.

Complex, staged operations took place, and thigh-high plaster on both legs for extended periods. Little Charlie knew no better, he cried and cried in pain.

On the positive side, Carol's show of tenderness and support for Charlie rubbed off on Veronica who, in Brian's words, just "didn't know how to be a mum". She stepped up.

Today Charlie won't be an athlete, but he's walking and happy, and Veronica's a proud mum.

It wasn't a fairytale story, though.

When Charlie returned home he went to school for the first time but was bullied because he was so far behind the other kids. It took a while, but those days are past and things have settled down.

Brian tells us Charlie's 14 now and "growing into a big kid, too".

"People say I saved Charlie's life, but the truth is Charlie saved mine," Brian says.

They're part of Brian's story, a story he's happy to tell in all its raw honesty, to packed auditoriums. More than once it has ended in standing ovations and tears flowing.

When he told Jennifer Jones of the impact her talk had on him, it brought her to tears. She is about to become Rotary International's first female president in its 115-year history.

Does Brian Coffey have a story to tell? He sure does ... and it's a beauty.

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