'Missed beyond belief': Mum and daughter running London Marathon for West Yorkshire police officer dad

Instead, his wife and daughter will be running the London Marathon on Sunday in his memory after David tragically passed away following a cardiac arrest just days before he was due to start his new life.

Lisa and Claudia Monaghan-Jones plan to run the whole 26-mile race together as they attempt to raise at least £5,000 between them for the British Heart Foundation.

The money raised will go towards funding research into heart conditions like David’s and help prevent more tragic deaths happening in the future.

Claudia, 27, who lives in Castleford with her partner Leeds Rhinos rugby league player Derrell Olpherts, said the whole family were absolutely devastated when her “charismatic” father died suddenly in June 2022.

“I’d seen him two days earlier and he was fine but then I got that call – a call you don’t want to get, ever” she said.

“Apparently, he’d woken up at about 4am with really bad back pains and went downstairs – which is when my mum heard a noise like a groan.

“She thought he was just playing with the dogs but when she went downstairs, she found him unresponsive on the sofa no more than 30 minutes after speaking with him.

"He had suddenly passed away.”

Lisa and David had been married for 40 years and he was just the "best man, the funniest man with this charismatic presence – he was someone who would just light up a room.”

Claudia said her mum, a coronary care nurse, worked on her father for 40 minutes while speaking on the phone to the ambulance.

She “never gave up”, but they later found out David had had a sudden cardiac arrest caused by left ventricular hypertrophy – a thickening of the wall of the heart’s main pumping chamber.David had worked as a police officer

for the West Yorkshire police since the 1970’s until he retired as a Chief Inspector in 2015.

After retirement he turned to writing books based on his undercover work and published his first, titled Snuff, under the pen name of Jay-Dee.

According to Claudia, her dad’s wish was to carry on writing more books and he and Lisa had recently bought a house in Wales to help make that wish come true.

Claudia said: “They had sold their house in Huddersfield, bought a house down in Wales and were just a week away from the move.

“They had signed the document to sell the house two nights before he died – he had packed everything up and was so excited as this was a new chapter of his life.

“He talked about being on the beach in Wales, with their two chocolate Labradors and future grandchildren in years to come - he said the day before he died when they visited Wales ‘we really are living the dream’”.

Following her dad’s death Claudia and her partner, as well as brother Marcus and his fiancé, Gemma, moved in with their mum for a month.

Lisa eventually decided to carry on with the move to Wales and has bought a home in Anglesey.

But before she leaves, Lisa, who already has three marathons under her belt, persuaded her daughter to run the London Marathon with her to help raise funds as well as awareness about heart conditions.

“We went to raise awareness because we want to stop other people going through what we went through,” Claudia said.

“Although his death was sudden, looking back there were so many signs - he had been saying he was tired, he said sometimes he would lie on the sofa and just feel like he was floating away.

“In terms of doing the marathon well, I'm not a runner but when your 60-year-old mother asks you to run a marathon on behalf of your dad I couldn’t say no.

“We’ve been training together and we’ll run on the day together - we’re not going to leave each other. We just wouldn’t."

Claudia and Lisa hope to raise £5,000 for BHF. Fundraising is going well – Claudia has roped in colleagues from her job as a project manager for Asda and partner Derrell has helped by donating a signed shirt and tickets to a Leeds Rhinos home match to be auctioned off.

But however much they raise, Lisa and Claudia know Dave would have been proud of their achievement.

“He was just the best man - my biggest critic without doubt, but for the best reasons because he knew it would push me,” Claudia said.

“He was the funniest man I have ever met and he just adored my mum. He could just bring joy to everything and he changed a lot of people’s lives.

“He is missed beyond belief, it changed our entire world but every day we are trying to raise awareness and just honour his memory for the most incredible man, this is why it’s so important that people know the signs.

“We hope it can save someone else in the way we wish my dad could have been saved.”