Police Officer Gloria Corcoran has met many residents of Rogers Park and northern Edgewater during the four years she has served as a neighborhood relations officer in the Rogers Park District.
Her duties include presenting puppet shows on safety for grade school pupils, acting as liaison between the police and the Boy Scouts Law Enforcement Explorers, and meeting with block clubs concerned about crime in their neighborhoods.
When not occupied with these duties, she often turns her attention to fielding non-emergency calls about abandoned cars or barking dogs, or supervising summer youth workers.
Corcoran is more than up to the task of her many responsibilities, Cmdr. Kenneth Alexander says.
”She`s the type of person who doesn`t blow her own horn,” he says,
”but she`s extremely conscientious and very capable. She never complains and gets along extremely well with the people of the community. She`ll even bring her husband and her son along with her to some of the neighborhood functions she attends.”
Corcoran`s performance is all the more impressive given the population of 150,000 and the wide range of ethnic groups represented within the 5.2-square- mile district, Alexander says.
”This is not an easy kind of work, this neighborhood relations,” he says. ”It`s especially difficult when you consider that this is a unique district. We include Rogers Park and part of Edgewater on the southern edge of the district. Some people have estimated there may be 45 different nationalities represented in the area. It helps a great deal that Officer Corcoran is bilingual.” (She speaks English and Spanish.)
One of Corcoran`s primary duties is working with the Explorers. The nationwide Explorers program is for people age 14 through 20 who are interested in law-enforcement work; it was started in 1959 by the Boy Scouts. ”They come here on their own time, and we furnish them with name tags and uniforms, including ties, caps and jackets,” she says. ”We get them involved in graffiti cleanup and try to make them feel like they`re part of the Police Department. Some of the Explorers who worked with this department 8 to 10 years ago have wound up as police officers right here in the 24th District.”
With two other neighborhood relations officers, Sgt. Bruce Rottner and Officer Kathy Walsh, Corcoran stages puppet shows for grade schools, day-care centers and day camps. Funded by the local Kiwanis Club, the half-hour shows alert children to proper street and traffic safety and to the need to watch out for ”Mr. Stranger Danger.”
”We perform the shows to a prerecorded audio tape, and we do all the movements of the puppets ourselves.” Corcoran says.
Occasionally, Corcoran represents Alexander at Drug Awareness Resistance Education (commonly known as D.A.R.E.) graduations throughout the district.
”D.A.R.E. is an eight-week program for kids in the 5th grade,” Corcoran says. ”After the completion of the program, there`s a graduation ceremony attended by police in full uniform. We`re there just to show we care about the kids.”
For six weeks each summer, she helps supervise two students, who may be age 14 through 16, in Mayor Daley`s Summer Youth Employment Program. They do clerical work at district headquarters, 6464 N. Clark St.
Corcoran and her colleagues interact with 40 to 50 community groups and block clubs that have been formed in Rogers Park and northern Edgewater.
”When residents on a particular block have a problem with crime, we recommend that they organize a block club,” she says.
”After they organize a bit and get to know their neighbors, we`ll come out and meet with them. We field questions, listen to their problems and give them feedback. We`ll tell them what we can and can`t do and, more important, what they can do to help make their communities safer.
”Among the things we`ll suggest is meeting with property owners who aren`t properly screening their tenants and finding out whether kids who hang out in the neighborhood really live there. The residents themselves can often make a real difference. Last year, one block club organized a Little League team, paid the entrance fees themselves, and now those 17 kids aren`t hanging out anymore. This year, that block club is organizing the team again.”
Many days, Corcoran also answers the non-emergency calls. If there`s an abandoned car on a block, a dog barking loudly, a landlord or neighbor dispute, Corcoran hears about it-in English or Spanish.
”I like dealing with the people,” she says. ”They have problems, just like anyone else. Just yesterday an older woman called. She`s a widow with no relatives in the city, and she had a problem with the family next door. She said they were throwing garbage on her lawn.
”I felt sorry for her. I decided I`ll drive over there and find out about the situation. If I can, I`ll try to get her involved with a nearby block club.”
Corcoran, 45, never set out to be a police officer. The oldest of seven children, she was born in Guanajuato in central Mexico, but she moved to Chicago with her family when she was 6 months old. She grew up on the Southwest Side and graduated from St. Patrick`s Girls High School, which has been closed.
After attending college for a year at the University of Illinois at Chicago, she worked at Illinois Bell as a long-distance operator and later in billing for a group health insurance administrator. While waiting one day for a bus to her insurance job, she struck up a conversation with two police officers in a patrol car. The driver asked for her phone number, but it was his partner, Officer John Corcoran, who wound up calling her and eventually marrying her.
Six years ago, when there were openings for new officers, Corcoran`s husband, now a detective in the business liquor and tobacco license division in the Grand Central Area on the Northwest Side, suggested that she join the force. ”I passed the exam, and I started out as a beat cop in the 19th District, at Belmont and Western, before coming to the 24th District,” she says. ”After about 15 months working a beat, I became a neighborhood relations officer.”
The Corcorans live on the Far Northwest Side and have a 12-year-old son, John III. ”He doesn`t want to be a police officer. He wants to be a baseball player-a basketball player or an anesthesiologist,” she says with a laugh.
Conscious of their separate ancestries, the Corcorans have dedicated themselves to causes that assist people in Ireland and Mexico. Each year, they sponsor a child from Northern Ireland through the Irish Children`s Fund. ”The child comes to live with us every summer for six weeks,” Corcoran says.
”It`s an incentive for him to mix with other cultures and religions.”
The couple also helps raise funds for an orphanage in Acapulco.
Although the Corcorans find little time for hobbies, they enjoy an occasional round of golf. Another favorite pastime is vacationing at their summer home in Rock City, near Freeport, Ill.
”My husband, who has been on the force for 25 years, has six years until retirement, and my son has six years until he leaves for college,” Corcoran says.
”Who knows,” she adds with a smile, ”maybe then we`ll move to Rock City, and I`ll go to work as a dispatcher for the sheriff.”
