Man about town

The telephone woke Aaron Ambrose up out of a dead sleep.

The voice on the other end of the phone offered the type of chilling news that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand at attention.

“We were under attack,” said Ambrose, Grain Valley chief of police. “It was Sept. 11, 2001 – and I was stationed in Washington, D.C. as a member of Vice President Dick Cheney’s Secret Service unit.”

When Ambrose drove into our nation’s capitol, he recalls, “I was the only one going into Washington. Everyone else was leaving.”

As he neared the vice president’s residence, he noticed deep plumes of smoke over the horizon.

“I knew about the World Trade Towers (being hit by 747 planes) and heard there was all kinds of bad stuff, really bad stuff, going on,” Ambrose said. “Then I looked at the smoke and thought, ‘Oh my God, they hit the Pentagon.”

By the time he arrived at the Cheney home, the vice president had been sequestered to a secret location. The President was on his way from a school in Florida to NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) headquarters in Colorado.

“As we secured the vice president’s home, all kinds of thoughts were going through my head,” Ambrose said. “I thought, ‘Is this my final day?’ When you see what happened like I did, and you hear about everything else happening across the nation, you wonder if this is it.

“When I finally left the vice president’s home, there were Humvees on every street corner in Washington. And there were soldiers manning them from machine gun turrets. I mean, this was happening in downtown Washington – it was like a scene from a movie.

“It was the most bizarre thing I ever saw.”

Eventually, Ambrose’s and the rest of our country’s lives returned to some form of normalcy. 

“It eventually got back to the point where you didn’t think about the vice president’s home blowing up at any minute – but it took a while for that to happen,” Ambrose said.

While that was easily the most chilling and demanding moment he experienced as a member of the Secret Service, he knew that such a calling was not something he wanted to make a lifetime career.

“I enjoyed my time with the Secret Service,” said Ambrose, who had been a member of the Military Police in the U.S. Army for six years and a member of the Grain Valley Police Department as beat cop. “But believe me, it’s not as glamorous or exciting as you might think.

“While I was assigned to the Vice President, I was also loaned out to the Clinton family. Hillary was a U.S. Senator, and I spent a lot of time with her. It was an important job, providing protection for the former First Family, but I knew I didn’t want to do it for the rest of my life.”

The graduate of Raytown High School and Park College returned home to see his family and some of his buddies from his days as a police officer in Grain Valley.

“I was a cop in Grain Valley until 1997, when I applied for the Secret Service. With my military background, I was accepted and after my training I was assigned to the Vice President and the former First Family.

“I also got to spend 1-and-a-half months at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah. That was pretty cool. I worked the afternoon shift and not a whole lot went on while I was on duty.”

When Ambrose took some vacation time to return to the metro area, he heard that Grain Valley police chief Gary Scherer was leaving.

“Some guys told me I should apply for the job, so I did,” Ambrose said. “That was in 2002. Somehow, I lucked out and got the job and have been here ever since.”

Lucked out? Don’t believe it.

“We’re the lucky ones, to have someone like Aaron Ambrose as our chief,” said Bank of Grain Valley president Allen Lefko, who recruited Ambrose to be a charter member of the Choices Program.

“We want successful people in our community to go and talk to all the eighth grade classrooms about making the right choices,” Lefko said. “All the kids enjoy listening to Aaron.”

The chief made a real impact on one young man at the Grain Valley Middle School.

“When you hear the chief of police is coming, you don’t know what to expect,” said Michael Bammon, who will be a freshman this fall. “He came and talked to our class and was really cool. He was funny, he answered all our questions and he wore his uniform.”

While the average time of service for a police chief in the United States is just over three years, Ambrose is going on seven years.

“I live in Grain Valley, and I love Grain Valley,” he said. “I work in Grain Valley. I met my wife (Kathy, the principal at Matthews Elementary School) in Grain Valley and we are raising our family in Grain Valley (stepson Jake Beckloff,13; stepdaughter, Tara Beckloff, 17; and son Carson, 1). 

“This town is my life, it encapsulates everything.”

Like all jobs, there are good days and bad.

“Let’s see,” he said, folding his hands behind his head and leaning back in the chair behind his desk, “I got a call from “Oprah” when we had the couple say they had the sextuplets, which didn’t exist. I did an interview for “Geraldo (Rivera) Live” and was interviewed by reporters from Japan, Germany, London and Australia.

“Tragically, we had the two teens who were convicted of murdering one of the boy’s mother, and they will be in jail for long, long time (Taylor Marquez, whose mother was killed, will serve 25 years of a life sentence and Eddie George received a life sentence for their roles in the murder) and had a murder that is under investigation just last week.

“You don’t like things like that to happen, especially when they happen in your community. So often, the only association people have with a police officer is in a time of need.

“An officer is accustomed to going to someone’s home in the middle of the night when their car is broken into. I stress to our officers, ‘You’re used to it. The homeowner isn’t. And I think our guys show a lot of compassion.”

Ambrose has become the face of Grain Valley. He was named a Pillar of the Community in 2005 and accompanies Santa Claus on his yearly ride throughout the city.

He helped organize the Victim’s Rights Golf Tournament to raised more than $26,000 over the past two years for victims of crimes.

And wherever he goes, the chief gets one question.

“They all want to know why I would leave the Secret Service and take this job,” he said, grinning. “And I tell them, ‘This is my dream job.’ When they asked me to become the chief of police, it was a no-brainer. I said yes, because I was able to come home.”