Eileen doesn’t mince words about her opinion of cellphone usage. After all, if the driver of a tractor trailer truck hadn’t been reaching for his cellphone on that day in July, 2010, her son would probably be alive today and her last image of him would not be, as she shared recently, pieces of his body in a morgue.

Even as a child, Paul had always wanted to be a police officer.

“From the time he was a baby, every time we saw a police officer, we had to pull over and get his picture taken,” Eileen shared.

In his middle school yearbook, Paul stated his desire to be a police officer when he grew up. After high school he entered an associate degree program for criminal justice at Lackawanna College before going to East Stroudsburg University (ESU) for his bachelor’s degree in sociology.

“He’d come home and he was like, I want to work with kids, and I want to work with my community. And he really had no other path that he ever talked about. He always talked about serving his community and being a police officer or a state trooper, really, that was, all he ever talked about his whole life” she said.

“Some people choose the path and then don’t go down it, but he had just always talked with us saying that’s what he wanted to do as his career.” she added.

Every year at Christmas, Eileen would try to find a police-themed ornament for Paul, just a reminder now of a dream that will never be realized because of someone else’s decision.

On July 4, 2010, Paul went to visit friends at ESU.

“Like he always did, he gave me a big kiss and a hug and walked out the door. And I never knew that would be the last kiss or hug that I would ever receive,” she said.

It turned out that the party Paul was headed to actually turned out to be farther than he thought, so he stayed overnight. He tried calling his mom to let her know there was a change in plans and that he wouldn’t be coming home when he had planned. Eileen never got the call until after Paul had been killed.

The day after Fourth of July, Eileen began her day normally – checking some of the jobs from her cleaning business and getting ready for a party at her home later that day.

People were calling her asking if she was okay, but she attributed their concern to the fact that her brother was in the hospital with severe burns.

She shared that she had a feeling something was not right, but again she thought it was about her brother.

She was sitting on a rocking chair on her front porch when the State Troopers pulled up at her house.

“All of a sudden I could see my son at 2, 4, 6, 8 racing through my brain and I was like, oh my God this is not my brother, this is my son,” she said.

After going back and forth with the police about yes, it was her car, yes, her son had an identifying Irish tattoo, but no, she couldn’t understand why he would be driving where the accident occurred. The missed phone call would have filled in that fact for Eileen.

And then the dreaded words came…”I’m sorry to inform you but your son was killed in a crash this morning at 7:55.”

“I just started screaming, not my son, he does everything right,” she said.

“They said a semi truck had crossed over and killed him,” she shared.

Eileen’s next reaction was that she wanted to see her son — a move the police officers advised her again and again not to do.

“He’s really bad,” she said they told her, but she persisted and eventually went to the morgue to see her son.

“When I went in I just couldn’t tell because they had him on the slab where they just had the body bag. I just looked at him and I said, that’s not my son. It’s not him,” she said.

“I had to unzip the body bag and look at the clothes he wore the night before and I was like, he’s in a million pieces. Twenty-four hours before this he was strong, healthy…he knew where he was going in life. Not even 24 hours later he was in a million pieces,” she said.

When she tried to hug, kiss or even touch him, the police said she couldn’t because he was a criminal case, so Eileen whispered in her son’s ear, “I will find out what happened to you and what caused this crash and I promise you I will fight for change.”

What had happened on that July morning on Route 33 in Hamilton Township, Monroe County, was that New Jersey truck driver Jaswinder Singh was southbound when, according to the police, he lost control of his tractor trailer and crossed the grassy median center and slammed head-on into Paul Miller’s car, killing him instantly, and also injuring 12 other people.

Eileen worked to make sure that Singh was held accountable for the accident and eventually the man was sent to prison for three years. He was released after serving 17 months.

“I met with him after he got out through the office of Victim Advocate,” she said.

“I go into prisons now, and I speak to people. Once you get out, even while you’re in there, you think about the pain you caused people. And I realized that he did. He was very remorseful and I forgave him. I told him his intent that day was not to kill my son, but he caused a lot of damage,” she said.

Since her son’s death, Eileen has been working to get a law passed that would make it an offense to drive distracted because of cell phone use.

She spent much of her time in Harrisburg since her son’s death, visiting legislators and trying to convince them that it’s the right thing to do.

She also advocates for funding for ALS-amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or Lou Gehrig’s disease-after her husband was diagnosed with the disease almost two years to the date of her son’s death.

For almost fifteen years Eileen would travel to Harrisburg to meet with legislators about getting a bill that would take cell phones out of the hands of drivers. One of her fears was that her husband would never see the law passed.

Last year early in June, an Act was passed amending the state’s Vehicle Code prohibiting “text-based communications” and the use of “interactive mobile devices” and providing for a fine which will be instituted this year. The new law, named for the young man who died and the mother who fought so long to get it passed, is known as Paul Miller’s Law.

The law makes it illegal to be holding your phone, a mobile device, while you are driving, for any reason, including making a phone call or looking at your GPS and texting or social media.

The law takes effect in June and drivers will be pulled over by police if caught breaking this law. The fine is set at $50, something which Eileen Miller is trying to get increased to make it more of a deterrent for drivers to reach for that phone when it dings.

“It’ll be 15 years this year and the pain, I think, gets harder, because I think about my granddaughters who are here, which is wonderful, and I’m so happy my daughter is married and all that, but I see all his friends get married, and then I’m like, why was it him? You know? Why? Why did it have to be him,” she said.

“But I know he’s watching me, and I know he’s with us, and I feel him a lot, and I know that by us doing all of this, it’s the right thing to do. I’m not going to say it doesn’t hurt, but I know it was the right thing to do and I’m glad that we did it. It’s just, I wish it was stronger and better and I wish we could say a complete ban, but that’s never gonna happen, never, but you never know with me,” she added.