When I was 25 years old, I knew there had to be more to life than what I was doing. I worked at a cable TV company. I was the youngest of four kids. My parents had immigrated to Boston from Ireland in the 1950’s. I had finished a Master’s Degree at Emerson College in Boston. Three years earlier, I had lived in London after graduating college and returned to Massachusetts to be with my mother who was dying from a rare bone cancer. My father had died ten months early from cirrhosis of the liver. I had gone home for his funeral and had no idea I would be coming home so soon for another one. I knew then the frailty of life. With the death of my mother, I knew that people could come and go from your life in the blink of an eye. I knew never to take anything or anyone for granted. But with time, these thoughts moved to the back of my head and I started going through the motions of living again until I didn’t have to pretend to be alive, I was alive again. I realized I wanted to make a difference in people’s lives and decided to become a police officer.
