Recent retirees reflect on Ocoee police career

Mike Alexander, Brian Satterlee and Michelle Grogan spent 30, 26 and 20 years, respectively, serving and protecting the citizens of Ocoee and amassing a wealth of law-enforcement knowledge and experience with the Ocoee Police Department. That’s 76 collective years of police service to the West Orange County city.

Each has made the decision to retire in the last year, making way for the next generation of Ocoee police officers.

SGT. ALEXANDER

Alexander was hired as a police officer in November 1993 and, through the years, worked day, night and midnight shifts. A few years later, before school resource officers were placed in every Orange County public school, he became the SRO at Ocoee Middle School.

He also taught the D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program in the schools; served as a detective working property, personal and economic crimes; was promoted to sergeant; and served a few years as a traffic sergeant.

“Every day is a new day,” Alexander said. “I had my same squad of people, but you start your shift at the beginning of the day, and you don’t know what’s going to happen.”

When Alexander was hired in 1993, the department had 27 officers. When he retired, there were about 90, he said.

“The city grew by leaps and bounds,” Alexander said. “I can remember driving around the midnight shift and thinking, ‘Wow, I haven’t seen a car in three hours.’”

Thus began his 30-year career with the OPD.

Alexander said he’s proud of his work early in the SRO program when he taught a law-awareness class to sixth-grade students.

“In law awareness, the kids were a little older and the whole curriculum was, ‘These are the laws, this is what you can get in trouble for now that you’re older,’” he said. “What could be just a kid pushing a kid off a bike and taking a pack of gum — that’s a strong-arm robbery.”

There are many rewarding moments in a police officer’s career, and for Alexander, two stand out in his memory. The first took place in 1995 when he saw a student standing by a soda machine. Alexander offered to help, but the student ran from him. He discovered why: The student had made a fake dollar bill and feared getting caught.

“I called him to the office; I read him the riot act,” Alexander said. “I made up this whole thing: ‘I have to call the Secret Service, confiscate your computer.’ He was in tears. … They called his parents; he had to pick up trash around the school.”

Alexander said he saw the student about 15 years later and they talked about that day.

“He told me, ‘Oh, man, I was in so much trouble, I was so scared, and I never did anything wrong in middle school and in high school because of that,’” Alexander said.

Another moment that stands out is meeting a mother and her two children after a bad officer call.

“I was pretty down about it,” he said. “When I cleared the call, I drove to a parking lot to just sit and decompress. I wasn’t there five minutes and a car pulled up near me; a lady got out and walked over to me. I really wasn’t in the mood to answer random questions. But it wasn’t that. She told me her kids had made some signs and little goody bags. They wanted to meet some police officers and thank them for what they do. I was floored. Needless to say, that made my day.”

Alexander has received numerous commendations, including Officer of the Quarter, Officer of the Year, the Chief’s Commendation Award and a Mothers Against Drunk Driving award for citing the most DUIs for the agency.

He regularly participated in the annual Shop with a Cop event at Christmastime.

“That was so rewarding to take kids shopping and have their faces light up when they picked out toys,” he said.

Alexander has taught in-service classes part-time at Valencia College for 20 years and teaches at Daytona State College, as well.

“There were many times I had to deal with people in crisis — talking them down in their time of need and getting them where they can get some help,” Alexander said. “All feel-good moments. I felt bad they were in crisis but felt good being able to diffuse the situation safely without anyone getting hurt.”

His retirement party was held in January, and 150 of his closest friends and family attended the celebration, he said.

He and his wife love traveling and are going to Alaska next month. They also have planned a family cruise to the Caribbean later in the summer.

LT. BRIAN SATTERLEE

Satterlee was hired as an officer in 1996 when a patrol shift had two or three officers and a supervisor. When he retired last April, there were eight to 10 officers per shift.

After serving as a patrol officer, Satterlee moved to the bike unit before interviewing and being assigned to the DEA task force.

As a task force agent, he worked large-scale drug cases with a concentration on heroine.

“I’d investigate undercover drug deals; I did undercover work,” Satterlee said. “It was fun. It was kind of like acting.”

After two years, he returned to Ocoee as a detective and helped start the West Orange Narcotics Task Force with officers in other agencies.

“I was an undercover drug agent, and at that time we knew we needed something,” he said. “(Ocoee and Winter Garden) had more drug cases; we teamed up with Winter Garden and the (Orange County) Sheriff’s Office, and we worked out of the sheriff’s office on anything west of Orlando.”

He said his most rewarding moments were successfully performing CPR on two people in distress and working on a case that dealt with the confiscation of two kilograms of cocaine, an AR-50 assault rifle and about $10,000 cash.

“Every day was something different,” he said.

Satterlee enjoyed being part of the city’s and the police department’s growth and, as an administrator, mentoring other officers.

He has received numerous commendations, including the Chief’s Commendation Distinguished Service Award and Officer of the Quarter.

Following his retirement last April, he became a special agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement working on a violent-crimes squad.

DETECTIVE MICHELLE GROGAN

Although Grogan retired in January, she returned to the OPD as a consultant and is working on cold cases and long-term missing people.

“That’s my passion, and I’ve been working on that my whole career,” she said.

When Grogan was hired as a police officer in 2003, she was assigned the midnight shift.

“I was the only female on my squad, and some nights I was the only female in Orange County,” she said. “And I got … pimped out to different agencies because they needed a female pat-down or needed a female to de-escalate a situation.”

Before becoming a police officer, Grogan was a substitute teacher and a nanny for a state trooper’s family in Massachusetts. This background allowed her to successfully serve five years as the SRO at the new Ocoee High School.

“That was awesome being a resource officer in a high school,” she said. “My big thing was safety with the kids. The biggest thing with high school is the kids drive and this is their first experience driving. I would stand at the top where the roundabout is, and I would point to their seatbelt, and they would point if they had them on. I would pull them over if they didn’t have them on. They were shaking, and I said, ‘What if you were pulled over on I-4 by a trooper?’

“Those high school kids are now parents themselves,” she said. “When I was in my police car, … the parents beeped at me and pointed at their seatbelt.”

Grogan became a detective for the first time in 2013, and one of her proudest moments was seeing one of her cases, a dangerous sex offender, receive a conviction of life in prison plus 10 years. His DNA also connected him to four open sexual assault rapes in Orange County.

“To be able to testify about him, that was amazing,” she said.

She and another lieutenant worked on a city ordinance that states no new sex offenders can move into the city of Ocoee anywhere near where children congregate.

Through the years, Grogan has enjoyed watching the growth of the department.

“We’re getting younger officers, and we’re getting more female officers, and we’re becoming more racially inclusive of officers and cultures,” she said. “We have an officer from Morocco; he’s Arabic and speaks five languages. We have a couple from Bulgaria, and we have a lot of Spanish-speaking officers. We have several officers who are Portuguese. It's a good thing for the police department. … It’s cool to be able to learn from each other.”

Grogan was recognized during her tenure with the Chief’s Award, the Commander’s Award and Officer of the Year for Crisis Intervention Team in all of Orange County.

The CIT award was for saving the life of a veteran, one of her former students, who wanted to commit suicide. She was able to help him through a veterans court formed by Orange County.

Since retirement, Grogan has returned to the OPD as a two-day-a-week contracted employee to work on seven open long-term homicide cases and three long-term missing adults, as well as three recent missing children. On her days off, she and her family enjoy spending time together and making travel plans. She and her husband, John, just returned from the Dominican Republic, and they have more trips on the horizon.