Humans of Rockaway: Laron Rhodie

By Shaun Smith

Laron Rhodie walked onto the beach at Beach 17th Street on Tuesday wearing an orange swim cap and a sleeveless wetsuit. He greeted the lifeguards who asked if he was going out for a swim. The water temperature was 56.3 degrees. He smiled and motioned to his suit and proceeded to swim graceful laps for several minutes. When he finished his swim, he agreed to chat with me.

“I’m a police officer in Brooklyn. Sometimes it can be challenging, but I like helping people…There’s a lot of negative things going on. You know what’s happened over the last like five years or so,” Rhodie  said. “So a lot of people view cops in a negative way…I mean, it makes me upset but I just try to be that change because I came from a different place than they’re from. Most cops don’t come from where I come from.”

Originally from Jamaica, Queens, Rhodie has lived in Rockaway for twenty-nine years. He went to Far Rockaway High School and then to Queens College. A Queens man through and through. “There’s a little bit of everything here. Put it like that. You can go into one neighborhood and be in a whole different culture like everywhere. It don’t happen like that in other boroughs. Maybe Brooklyn, but any other borough is not like that. Definitely not Staten Island…the Bronx also, Manhattan, you get the same thing.,” Rhodie said. “But you go to Queens and Brooklyn, every neighborhood you got is like a different area.

“Originally, I was in school to be a teacher. So I switched over…I used to do store security and then I switched over to P.D.” Before joining the force, he was studying American History with the intention of teaching. “The funny thing is, though I had my [history] class like eight years ago, everything we talk about in the class is happening now,” he said.

He said his job as an officer is his passion, “Well, maybe if I could go back I’d have been a teacher but…I’m 11 years a cop, only got nine years to go,” Rhodie said proudly.

“I like the water, the beach. I learned how to swim maybe four years ago. Starting last year, I’ve been swimming here. I’m kind of an extreme person. I used to box. I went from boxing to running, running to swimming, swimming to triathlons,” he shared. Considering his delicate freestyle in ocean water, I was shocked that he’d only been swimming for a few years. “Basically there’s a unit at work I was trying to get into, it’s called Emergency Service Unit, you gotta be able to swim to get in…I got so close, I just had my interview last week, but I’m about to get promoted so, I’m not going to be going. I’m going to be a Sergeant.

“A goal that I’ve achieved is getting promoted to Sergeant. My next achievement, I want to get a house,” he said.  Rhodie, along with his wife and three kids currently live in an apartment in Far Rockaway, “The market is so crazy right now…I don’t know if I wanna live next to the water though ‘cause I lived through Sandy, so…I lived through Sandy, it was crazy.

“I’m a big family person. One of my goals was my son graduating high school, now I’m tryna get my daughters to do the same…Well my girls, I’m getting them to swim now too, so they’ve been taking lessons at the Y. I’m starting them in the pool,” he said. “Tryna get them in triathlons also. I have them running races already.”

I thanked him for taking time to talk to me and that I hoped to see him around the beach this summer. Laron Rhodie is the first Humans of Rockaway participant I approached at random in public. I was nervous, but he was kind and open. I am reminded that strangers are only friends you haven’t met yet. Talk to them, turn them into friends.