Ailing cop grateful for BPD’s care
By Joe Fitzgerald
Boston Herald Columnist
Monday, June 12, 2006
She’s back in Michigan now, reunited with her family and eager to resume her career as a Pontiac cop, but more than she could have imagined when she pulled into town last April, Jaclyn Martindale still has Boston on her mind.
“It’s all behind me now,” the 28-year-old mother of two noted with relief, referring to eight weeks of proton beam radiation treatments at Massachusetts General Hospital to combat a rare form of cancer known as chondrosarcoma.
“Everything went well and I couldn’t wait to be with my kids again, yet saying goodbye to Boston was bittersweet. Those incredible people turned a terrible time of my life into such a warm and wonderful experience.”
She was referring to local members of the law enforcement community who circled their wagons around her from the moment she arrived.
Arnie Larson, a correction officer at MCI-Norfolk and state president of the Fraternal Order of Police, had been alerted to her plight by his Michigan counterpart, setting itto motion a chain of responses that included free use of a Fields Corner apartment donated by his sister, Rachel, and daily transportation provided by Boston cops assigned to the family assistance unit.
“It felt a little weird that first morning, getting into the unmarked cruiser,” Martindale recalled. “But I became comfortable very quickly, and by the end of that week I noticed myself telling people, ‘I’m on my way home.’ The apartment was fully furnished, and the freezer and cabinets were stocked with groceries. There’s just so much I could tell.”
Billy Carroll, Julie Colburn and Lisa Clark-Morgan comprise that Boston unit under the supervision of Jimmy O’Connor, and Martindale soon discovered she was more than just an assignment to them; indeed, she had personally touched them all.
“Billy’s wife Ruth brought over a homemade spaghetti meal,” she recalled. “Lisa and her husband took my husband and me to the movies. Julie and her husband brought us to their home for dinner. And they were all doing these things on their own time, like getting up at 4 in the morning on a weekend to make sure my husband made it to the airport on time.
“I went to Boston because I needed very specialized medicine, but what these people did for me was pretty special medicine, too.”
Colburn, a mother of four, said it was more than just a case of cops caring for a fellow cop; there were tugs on the heartstrings, too.
“We were supposed to be the strong ones, the ones who remained level,” she explained. “And Jaclyn made that easier by being so upbeat. But one day she came to our home and my kids had her out in the back yard playing tag and hide-and-seek. When I told her, ‘Hey, come back up here and relax,’ she said, ‘No, this is great! It’s just like being home with my kids.’ Moments like that can really get to you.”
Martindale got to see Fenway Park and ride the Duck Boats, and was the guest of honor at a rollicking barbecue fund-raiser hosted by Larson’s organization, so she went home with the tales tourists love to tell.
“But I also saw a part of Boston most people never get to see, which includes the people who live there,” she said. “I saw the hearts inside those uniforms. I was hugged and wished well by hundreds of officers who knew nothing about me except that I was a fellow officer going through a very difficult time in my life.
“At the goodbye party they gave me last Thursday night I tried to say thanks, but if I said it a million times it wouldn’t be enough because I know I’ll never be able to repay them. I’ll never forget them, either.”
