Never Say Never

A former Air Force reservist and career police officer on Maryland’s Eastern Shore now finds himself in a career he never would have pictured for himself: happily teaching teens the ropes of police work, and finding satisfaction in sourcing the next generation of law enforcement jobs for his community.

“When I was in high school,” Mike Levy recalled in the subtle accent of a native New Yorker, “I said, ‘man, when I get out of school, I’ll never go back. I can’t imagine why anybody would teach high school.

He pauses. "You should kind of think before you say the word never," he said.

Levy is in his sixth year overseeing Criminal Justice instruction at Worcester Technical High School in Newark, Maryland. About 60 students are now enrolled in the two-year program offering coursework on law enforcement, forensics, homeland security, emergency management, and geographic information systems.

Remarkably, Levy gets other vocational students to lend a hand: for ballistics class, culinary students have been known to cook up gel blocks to NIJ specs. For a primer on vehicle searches, automotive students share tips. Forensics lessons get a boost from cosmetology students, who provide strands of hair. Even the biomedical science department gets involved, procuring real blood samples – cow blood, that is – for lessons on blood spatter analysis.

Levy’s journey to the classroom was a more than two-decade process that twisted and turned its way from his hometown of New York City, to the battlefields of Kuwait, to the beaches of Ocean City, Maryland.

He grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where his parents both worked for ABC News. A self-described “studio rat,” Levy remembered seeing famous journalists like Peter Jennings and Barbara Walters working alongside his father in the newsroom. 

Coming back from his first semester of college, still unsure about his career path, his father pulled him aside for an earnest heart-to-heart.

“My dad sat me down, and said, ‘you know, you’ve talked to me about the military. Why don’t you do it? Join the military. See the world. See what’s out there,’” Levy recalled.

With that, Levy joined the Air Force in 1984, and shipped out to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. He was 19. Despite growing up in the melting pot of Manhattan, Levy said this was his first real opportunity to experience different types of people with varied cultural background from all over the United States.

After graduating security police academy, Levy was stationed at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. His job for the next three years to ride in a Lockheed C-5 Galaxy and provide security for its air crew. Those missions took him all over the world. Today, according to Levy, this "flying team" is a special operations role under what’s now called the Phoenix Raven program.

Levy opted out of active duty in 1987, and joined the Air Force Reserves. He began his career in law enforcement, starting with the sheriff’s office in Wicomico County, Maryland, and then moving onto the police department in nearby Ocean City. Here, in this seaside resort town, Levy would remain for the duration of his police career – but the job was interrupted, twice, when his military duty called.

His unit was activated in 1991 for Operation Desert Storm, and he was stationed at Dover AFB for four months. Then, after the events of September 11, 2001, he was deployed for a 14-month tour that took him on missions to Kuwait, Somalia, and Kosovo, among others.

Levy, now 53, retired from military service in 2003 at the rank of Master Sergeant. He smiles warmly when recalling the lifelong friends he’s made in his reserve unit.

“Even though you only see each other one weekend a month, two weeks a year,” he said, “most reserve units are much busier than that. You see this kid go to college, get married, have children. They become family. My best friend and I, we met in the military, from active duty reserve – I’ve known him longer than I’ve known my wife.”

Back now for good at this point with the Ocean City Police, Levy spent the next decade wearing many hats in a small department: detective, SWAT team, mounted unit. In 2007, he moved full-time into the role of Public Information Officer. It was that role, he said, that really set him on the path – though he didn’t know it the – to a career as an educator.

“Part of my job was community services, and you don’t realize it, but you’re doing a lot of teaching. A lot of information-sharing with the community, like our Citizens Police Academy. A lot of training with your own people how to deal with the media. Next thing you know, you’re at the police academy teaching recruits,” Levy said.

Six months shy of retirement, Levy was approached by Worcester County Public Schools: how would he like to take over the criminal justice program at the tech school? It was an urgent question, because the man hired for the job had quit two months into the school year. Levy accepted the job, retired from police work on October 31, and started his new classroom job the very next day.

He had to learn on the job – not only how to run the program, but how to become more patient, he admits – and streamline his time management skills as a classroom teacher.

Today Levy he invests a lot of time outside of school, too, communicating with students to help them get their internships and college applications together. He’s bolstered the program by calling upon his network of law enforcement friends and colleagues to appear in the classroom. He’s encouraged students to get involved in work-study programs and internships with local first responders and prosecutors.

“The students I’ve been fortunate to deal with are amazing,” he said. “It took about three years for me to get myself into full teacher mode, and understand the needs of our students, what they’re facing, the kind of things they really need to be successful.”

Going from police officer to teacher also comes with a few well-appreciated perks. Unlike his police beat, a teacher doesn’t get called back to work after he leaves for the day, and never has leave cancelled. To his delight, he gets snow days and fog delays.

“I love snow days,” he said, his eyes wide, with a can-you-believe-this grin. 

Finding good candidates who are honest and have integrity is always a challenge for the world of law enforcement. So, for that reason, Levy says he’s ultimately honored to have the privilege and responsibility of seeding his career field with qualified, knowledgeable people.

“I now cannot picture myself doing anything else,” he said. “If ever there’s a job for me that actually shows me the result of my labor, it’s been this one. I can actually see these kids growing up to be pretty stellar adults, and contribute in a very positive way to our communities. Call me selfish, I’d like to keep all of them in our community.”

This profile appeared in the February 2019 edition of At Ease magazine. Photos by Grant Gursky.