I’m a big believer in Divine intervention. What I mean is that oftentimes we try to plan and calculate our important life decisions, but what usually happens it’s the chance encounter or the ‘lucky’ incident that dramatically affect our lives. Take my life, for instance. I became a Los Angeles police officer by what I think was divine intervention. I was still in the Marines and had returned from my first overseas deployment. I was stationed at a large naval base on the east coast. I had decided to leave the Marine Corps and go into law enforcement. I was due to be separated from the Corps in one week. I was late for chow and took a shortcut to get to the mess hall. Just by chance I ran into my old battalion Sergeant Major who I had served with overseas. Neither of us had known the other had been stationed at this base. After I advised him I was getting out of the Marine Corps, he asked me what I was going to do. I told him I wanted to go into law enforcement, and I was going to apply to either Philadelphia PD or NYPD. I also mentioned that they, like most police departments on the East Coast, had a one year residency requirement. The Sergeant Major then asked me if I had ever thought about the Los Angeles Police Department. He might as well have asked me if I had thought about a police department on the moon. When I brought up the fact that not only did I not know anyone in Los Angeles, I thought I might have a tough time finding a job there while I waited for the one year residency to kick in. He then floored me with the fact that not only did they not have a residency requirement; he had a high ranking contact on the department. One week later, I was an honorably discharged Marine and flying across the country to Los Angeles. I spent 22 years working as a police officer and later as a detective, and as they say, the rest is history.
