Studs Terkel wrote “Work is about a search for daily meaning

as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash,

for astonishment rather than torpor;

in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.”

 

Ever since I can remember my parents and grandparents instilled in me an interest in and love of work.  On both sides of my family, the adults in my life provided many examples of hard work, of finding one’s passion in your work, and they taught me by their example the principle that no matter what you choose to do, find something you love to do and then do your very best at it.  One of the first hard covered books I remember receiving as a gift was “Working” by Studs Terkel, who interviewed and chronicled many different workers about their jobs.  So, it was from an early age that I wanted to work, primarily to earn money to buy ice hockey equipment, and in high school my first of many motorcycles.  I have had many jobs in my life, many real and some imagined.

 

My first job for pay was watering pot plants while their owners were away on Christmas break.  I was nine or ten years old; my family lived at the time in a college dormitory on the University of Chicago campus where my parents were resident heads to 55 students in the early 1970’s.  In sixth grade, I got hired at a small neighborhood department store called Breslauers on 53rd Street in Hyde Park.  Stevie Breslauer was a longtime family friend, which I’m sure is why she hired me.  Stevie owned and operated her store which sold everything - men’s, women’s and children’s clothing, sewing and dress making supplies, costume jewelry, shoes and there was a U.S. post office in the back of the store.  Stevie was a lovely tough women entrepreneur, with a raspy smoker’s voice, her miniature poodle “Gigi” always perched on guard behind the counter next to the cash register.  For some reason I got put in the shoe department, in spite of wanting to work in the men’s department in the front of the store with its leather wallets, neatly folded dress shirts, and belts displayed in large, polished glass cases.  I was relegated to the shoe department.  I got quite good climbing a ladder in the stock room with one hand carrying stacks of shoe boxes in the other.  I remember a long hot summer selling women’s shoes - it was quite a challenge trying to squeeze a woman’s swollen and sweaty size 9 foot into a size 7 pump or loafer.  This first “real” job taught me a lot about people and how to speak and interact with adults.  

 

The next summer I worked outside at Bob’s newsstand on Hyde Park Boulevard, hawking daily papers to morning regulars, horse racing betting sheets, and men’s magazines Playboy, Hustler, Oui, their covers wrapped in plastic concealing their mysterious forbidden pages.  

 

Next, I was a summer day camp counselor for a number of summers. I made the mistake of calling in sick on the last day of camp one year when I was perfectly fine, and then I happened to be seen by the camp Director riding my motorcycle with a girlfriend on the back.  I was unceremoniously fired, and I learned a hard lesson of accountability.  

For a number of summers during high school I worked at the Spokesmen bicycle shop in Hyde Park with my best friend Chris Fitchen.  Chris was a real cyclist and bike mechanic and although I was learning to repair bikes, I was really just the flat tire repair guy.  The store was right near the lakefront bike path which frequently had broken glass resulting in many flat tires rolling into our shop.  My record on a busy Saturday was over 100 flat tires fixed.  It was in the bike store that I worked on my sales skills, and I quickly was selling bikes on the floor when not fixing flat tires in the back.  It was my time working out on the floor that I also began to talk with every police officer who came in looking for a new bike or to have an old one repaired. This was my first opportunity to speak with real police officers about their jobs, something I began to get interested in.  I was a young Studs Terkel interviewing real working police officers about their day-to-day experiences.  Also during high school, I worked as a lifeguard at a Northside apartment building pool that was managed by my coach and mentor Sandy Patlak, aka “The Coach” who managed a series of private apartment building swimming pools with student athletes as his summer lifeguard staff.  This was a new experience for me on the North side of Chicago, new neighborhoods, girls and work experience taking care of the wealthy “North siders”.

 

In college, I worked as a bouncer and bartender at a college bar called the Oxford Pub in La Crosse, WI.  It is in this fine establishment of twenty-five cent tap beers and juke box music that I met Jackie my wife of 30+ years, which made all the bar fights and torn clothing worth it.  In 1983, I moved to New York City to finish college and start my career in law enforcement.  My first job while in school was as a department store detective at the famous B. Altman store on Fifth Avenue and 34th Street.  I got this job because my Grandfather knew the store physician from medical school, yes, the store had an in-house physician, nurse and medical office.  In this job I got my first taste of big city crime fighting – the man who stole 13 neckties and then jumped through a glass window without knowing what floor he was on, which was the third. He hit the fire escape on the way down and only broke his ankle.  We caught him limping away at quite a clip two blocks from the store, a trail of silk neckties marking his direction of flight.  As a store detective in Midtown Manhattan, I encountered gangs of trained pick pockets from the infamous South American “School of the 7 Bells”, beautifully dressed transvestites stealing women’s perfume, only given away by their large hands and feet. Or the elaborate theft ring - the thieves snuck into the store through the air conditioning ducts and tried to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars in fur coats, only to be caught by an employee who was being threatened to cooperate with the thieves.  This job was exciting.

 

I tried to learn everything I could about law enforcement, crime and criminals. New York City in 1983 was a veritable crime laboratory.  I worked as an investigator in the City of New York inspector general’s office investigating allegations of fraud and corruption among city employees.  Finally in 1984 I was sworn in as a police officer.  It was in this job that I first started doing undercover work, which was really like working a job within a job.  I drove an unlicensed gypsy cab in Brooklyn as a decoy to catch armed robbers, only to learn years later there was a serial killer who was stalking gypsy cab drivers at the time.  I worked for three weeks in Saint Raymond cemetery in the Bronx landscaping and digging graves while investigating corruption and no-show jobs in the cemetery worker’s union. Posing as a building inspector and receiving bribe offers to overlook building code violations or working as a city job applicant targeting corrupt doctors who were passing employee screening tests for a fee when the applicant was obviously failing the tests. Working undercover in a job temporarily meant studying and learning the details, look and language of the workers being copied, blending in and not drawing attention – being the grey man.

​

Later during my FBI career, I would do many different undercover jobs, a naïve but wealthy investor, a right-wing gun nut buying illegal machine gun parts at unregulated gun shows, a gas & electric utility worker, selling “stolen” military equipment to militia members, or posing as the bodyguard and driver for a notional “Mr. Big” organized crime member.  Each job or role like bit parts in a grand theatrical production, I was a jack of all trades, master of none.

 

All of these jobs real and imagined drew on my early family and work experience.  The work ethic I learned from my parents and grandparents, helped me get through difficult and challenging jobs as I found my passion in law enforcement, helping others. 

 

As I reflect on my life’s work, I am particularly grateful to have had the opportunity, ability and privilege to always be able to work.  Especially during this pandemic year when so many people have lost their jobs or their working world has turned upside down.  I am fortunate to still be able to reinvent myself and continue to work in exciting new ways, not a Monday through Friday sort of dying as Studs Terkel would say.