'Saw Jesus and didn't want to come back': Scott Meek remembered as deft guard, loving father

Scott Meek was minutes away from getting off work. He was tired after picking up an extra shift.

"Please put your vest on," Lynette Grundberg, his significant other, said to him on the phone.

"I'm almost off," he replied.

Moments later, Meek, hired as private security at Frugal MacDoogal liquor store, found himself in a tussle with 40-year-old Randy Charles Levi.

Levi, according to police, had been in the store earlier attempting to shoplift. He fled, but returned and got into an argument with the manager, Meek's daughter, Abbey Corlew, said.

Meek stepped in to intervene. The two got into a physical fight and they fell, Meek backwards against the sloped parking lot pavement, and Levi on top of him, Corlew said.

"He never in a million years would allow anyone to disarm him," his daughter said. "But I think the slope of the lot was too much for him to navigate with his bad hip. It was a collection of circumstances no one could have predicted."

Levi, police said, pulled the trigger on Meek's own gun, killing him.

Paramedics tried to bring Meek back as they rushed him to Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

"He was gone almost immediately," Corlew said. "I like to say he saw Jesus and he didn't want to come back."

He was 59.

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Passion for protection

Protecting people was a passion for Meek.

A Joelton native, Meek grew up training in karate, earning his sixth-degree black belt in September. He taught for more than 30 years.

After three hip replacements and two car wreck-related spinal fusions, Meek was on the mend and training to compete again, Corlew said.

"He had very big dreams," she said. "And he'd achieve them. I have no doubt."

In the early 80s, Meek dove head first into private investigation and security, building a client list from celebrities and politicians to Olympic athletes. He worked large scale events around the country and taught other security professionals, and at times police officers.

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He kept every event pass from all his gigs.

"They could probably fill this wall," Corlew said, gesturing to the space in front of her. "He did everything a decorated officer did without being one. Anything you needed protected, directed, he did it."

His need to protect others never fell short and Corlew suspects that's part of the reason Levi was able to get the better of her dad.

"He was protecting someone else, the manager," she said. "He was concerned for the employee's safety rather than his own."

'Some kind of wonderful'

Meek was a grandfather. He was a jokester. He was a lover of weird, old music and cardboard sci-fi movies. "You know," Corlew said, laughing, "the ones where the special effects are actually cardboard on strings."

"Oh, he'd watch stuff like that for hours," Grundberg added about Meek.

Corlew and Grunberg laughed a lot as they told stories about Meek.

He was, after all, the "best worst driver," the way he weaved through traffic, blew  transmissions in four cars, but always reached destinations safely.

"Of the wrecks he's been in," Corlowe said, "none were his fault."

Meek taught his daughter how to make homemade pizza. They watched horror movies together, even though she was "way too young."

To honor her father, Corlew is going to do something Meek never did — get a tattoo. She circled a length of her exposed thigh, above the knee.

"I'm going to get a minimalist portrait tattoo of us together, then around it it'll have lyrics from that song he used to sing to me all the time growing up," Corlew said.

She paused. Took a deep breath and melodically talked out the lyrics to "Some kind of wonderful" by Grand Funk Railroad.

"Oh, my baby, she's alright. Oh, my baby's clean out of sight. Don't you know that she's? She's some kind of wonderful."

As Corlew sang, she bobbed her head to the lyrics.

Grunberg, meanwhile, is debating life without Meek.

He used to ask Grunberg what she would do without him.

"I've got to get stronger," she said, holding in tears. "He did everything for me."

Contact Tennessean reporter Kirsten Fiscus at 615-259-8229 or KFiscus@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @KDFiscus.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Family remembers security guard killed outside Frugal MacDoogal