While others climbed the career ladder, Mike Garafalo has been content to spend 29 years as "a damn good street officer."
By TOM ZUCCO
Published March 25, 2004
[Times photo: James Borchuck]
Mike Garafalo, right, interviews security guard Robert Fournier while working a vandalism case at the Pinellas County Judicial Building in St. Petersburg on Monday. Garafalo has been chosen the St. Petersburg Police Department's Officer of the Year after 29 years on the force.
In the 1980s, Mike Garafalo grew his hair long for an undercover investigation into illegal gambling, loansharking and money laundering.
ST. PETERSBURG - He's sitting in what may be the safest place in the city - the lunchroom inside the St. Petersburg Police Department headquarters. Nobody can get to him here.
And yet he constantly folds and unfolds his hands. His knee bounces like a jackhammer. And when a man from a vending company enters the room and begins to restock a candy machine, he watches every move he makes.
Vending machines. Mike Garafalo knows about those.
For nearly two years in the late 1980s, he posed as an employee of Royale Flush Vending, a business that didn't exist. Garafalo, a St. Petersburg police officer, was part of a multiagency undercover operation that targeted illegal gambling, loansharking and money laundering, mostly in Tampa.
To play the role effectively, he had to do everything that was against his nature. He let his hair grow long, wore dirty clothes and spent countless nights with dangerous people in shadowy parts of town.
Operation Royale Flush resulted in more than 30 arrests and the closing of two Tampa nightclubs.
But it had other effects as well.
"I didn't even realize I was watching the vending machine guy," Garafalo would say a few moments later. "And to be honest, it still bothers me to go to Tampa because of all that. It took its toll. There was always a chance someone would find out who you were.
"But even now, when I visit a neighbor, I don't stand in front of the door when I knock. You just do it. Without knowing it.
"It's because of all those years . . ."
Today, after nominating Garafalo several times over all those years, the St. Petersburg Police Department and the Exchange Club will honor him as the Officer of the Year. And again, for a different reason this time, he'll be a little nervous.
"I guess it's been some career," he says with a smile.
He made the news more than once during that career. In 1992, when a man who had been on a drinking binge pulled a gun and shot at him, Garafalo and another officer fired back. The man died. Last year, he was recognized by the department for rescuing two people from a truck that had overturned and caught fire.
He has survived a shotgun blast at close range, was bitten by a pit bullterrier during a standoff, and watched bullets pound the ground at his feet during the city's 1996 civil disturbances.
But there are other, smaller, things that don't show up in his personnel file or in the news accounts.
On his wrist is a blue ID bracelet the bears the name of Herbert R. Sullivan, the last St. Petersburg officer to die in the line of duty. Sullivan was shot to death on Aug. 18, 1980, during a drug buy.
Every year on that day, more than once during a driving rain storm, Garafalo finds Sullivan's grave at Woodlawn Memorial Gardens and lays flowers by the marker. Sullivan was his close friend and had lived next door.
"I promised myself I'd never forget Herb," Garafalo said. "And I won't."
His file refers to him as a living legend. The pride of the force. From business owners to transients, everyone who has spent any serious time in downtown St. Petersburg knows him.
But it's also what Garafalo didn't do that helped him earn the award.
He's never taken a sick day in his 29 years on the force, and he was never late for work. He donates vacation time to fellow officers who are gravely ill, and has received letters from mental health groups, thanking him for using restraint when encountering mentally ill or emotionally troubled people.
* * *
It wasn't a book or a movie or a relative who was on the force that got Garafalo interested in police work. It was the New York beat cops who stopped by his father's restaurant - Angelo's Fairview Tavern in Elmsford, N.Y. Over steaks and beers, the officers swapped stories about what had happened that day, and Garafalo would listen.
"But mostly," he said, "I saw how close they were and how they looked out for each other."
Faced with long waiting lists to join local law enforcement, Garafalo moved to the first city that had an opening. It was St. Petersburg.
In 1991, after the undercover operation ended and his life settled down, Garafalo got married. Each morning, just before he leaves the house, Raechel Garafalo pokes her husband in the chest.
"Wearing your vest?" she asks.
"He doesn't get as much sleep as he ought to," she said. "It's a real challenge to be a good cop who has passion and still cares."
She does whatever she can to help. Right now, she's reading a book titled I Love A Cop: What Police Families Need To Know by Ellen Kirschman. It describes the progression cops go through during their careers and how it affects their families.
"He takes things with him sometimes and feels other people's pain," she said, "and that takes a toll on him emotionally.
"He doesn't always tell me right away. Sometimes it comes out when he's talking to his friends. But I make sure we talk about it as much as he wants to.
"I'm so proud of him. He's an inherently good person. I don't need an award to tell me that."
Besides his wife, perhaps no one knows Garafalo as well as Tim Story. In the early 1980s, the two men were recently divorced and relatively new on the force when they decided to share an apartment to cut expenses. They would be roommates for eight years.
Batman and Robin, Story said.
Story, whose mother was one of the first female officers in the city, eventually rose to district major. Garafalo decided to remain on the street. The two men rarely see each other now.
"We had different aspirations," Story said. "Mike's was to be a damn good street officer. He has his wife and his friends, but the single most important thing to him is being a police officer."
And that, Story said, means that some of the newer officers don't understand Garafalo. "To them, it's a 9 to 5 job. But Mike's old school. Shoes always polished. Uniform crisp. Squad car shiny.
"Even my good cops get complaints now and then. Mike never does.
"And you know how sometimes, there are certain jobs that get done, but no one knows how?
"Mike Garafalo."
* * *
He's a little worried about getting old now. He'll be 52 in August, and each year, there are fewer street cops his age. Of the nearly 75 members of his police academy class in 1975, he's the only one still on the force. He can't hear as well as he used to, and his knees bother him.
Garafalo leaves the police station and follows up on a call. During the night, someone had tipped over concrete urns in front of the county judicial building.
"This is the part of police work," he says, "that you don't see on TV."
After interviewing security guards and getting a surveillance tape, Garafalo heads back to his squad car. A fire department truck passes on the street and the driver toots the horn. Garafalo turns and waves.
"The biggest thing I'll miss is my friends," he says. "You stay in touch, go to the PBA meetings. But it's not the same.
