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When chasing after shoplifters began to take up too much of my time, I was forced to hire security for my pharmacy.

First I hired off duty police, which was not exactly legal in those days; cops were not allowed to moonlight. Which turned out to be okay because they were mostly a waste of money anyway. Showed zero interest. Then I decided to mix in a few firemen, who seemed much more promising.

One day one of the cops was speaking to me, along with the fireman who had just clocked in. The policeman, who had just completed his shift, was holding court, bragging to us about his position in the police department; apparently he was the head trainer for the bicycle cops.

The fireman, Mike, an ex-cop himself, was unimpressed, as the officer was quite full of himself. Since it was not Mike’s place to say anything, I decided to speak up.

“What is it you do, exactly?” I asked. “Hold on to the backs of their bicycle seats and run along behind them?”

Both of their faces turned crimson; Mike’s, with suppressed laughter, while the cop was quite angry. He walked out of the store and never returned. Mike and I, on the other hand, became friends.

Turned out Mike was a fireman, an ex-pro baseball player (minor leagues, Toronto), and a former cop. As he liked to say, three out of the four things every little boy aspires to become; all that remained was for him to become an astronaut.

I was in the pharmacy area one night when I noticed Mike stroll up to three men in their early twenties, hands clasped behind his back. Seems these fellows found a misplaced pricing gun, and were using it to their advantage on some boxes of Tylenol.

Mike was about 5 foot 9, which was a good half foot shorter than the three troublemakers. Not a big guy, but obviously fearless and in great shape. As he wormed his way between the men, smiling, I heard him say, “Whatcha up to, fellers?”

A scuffle soon began.

I dropped what I was doing and ran to help. By the time I arrived, two of the guys were running for the door, one of whom was clutching his stomach, where Mike had apparently elbowed him. The third guy was being dragged down the aisle, literally by his collar.

That’s what I called security!

I was always curious as to why Mike decided to go from police to fire, but never asked, and he never spoke about it. He would occasionally discuss his fire exploits, and the annual police/fire hockey game (called Guns and Hoses!), but never about what happened to him when he was a cop.

After a couple of months I finally worked up the nerve to ask him about it. After a pause – I assumed he must have been working up the will to relive a traumatic experience – he began his story:

It was a freezing cold New Year’s Eve, five and a half years earlier. Sunday morning, 2am. Mike was stationed on an elevated subway platform in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.

As a ‘B’ train approached in the distance, Mike heard a loud crash from the street below. When he looked over the fence, he saw four men entering a liquor store, which had closed two hours earlier; back then, liquor stores were not allowed to be open on Sundays.

They had smashed the front window with an aluminum baseball bat.

Oh wow, I thought. What was I thinking when I asked? Mike either got hurt or hurt one or more of those guys. Obviously a very tough experience. Would have made anyone switch jobs.

“So what happened?” I asked timidly, after a very long pause; I did not want to overstep my bounds, but at this point I really had to know.

Mike took a moment, seemingly to get his emotions under control, then said: “When the train came in, I got on it and got off at the next station.”

Firemen. The best.