Burke Brownfeld of Alexandria is living his childhood dream. He has found a way to serve his community and have the career he has always wanted. He’s becoming a police officer.
Burke began volunteering in the Alexandria Police Department’s property section when he was 16 — the summer between his sophomore and junior year of high school.
“When I was a little kid, I used to dress up in a uniform and carry a toy gun around the neighborhood, pretending I was a police officer,” he said. “Then, I found out that I could actually volunteer at the Alexandria Police Department. When my friends were out partying on Friday nights, I was here going on a ride-a-long with a police officer. My friends thought I was really strange.”
He’s always been a volunteer. “At my church, the Presbyterian Meeting House, we went on trips to West Virginia and Mexico in the summers to build houses,” he said. “I always thought it was important to give something to others who weren’t nearly as lucky as me.”
His work at the police department was an extension of that. “It’s been really great to watch Burke mature from an idealistic teenager who wanted to save the world into a mature adult who is finding a way to do that,” said David Miller, the civilian commander of the property section at the police department.
Burke began as a volunteer and then was hired in 2002 as a seasonal property clerk. “I kind of got to do the same thing I had been volunteering to do but I got paid,” Burke said.
He attended school, first at St. Mary’s Catholic School in Old Town; then at The Potomac School in McLean and finally at William and Mary where he earned a degree in psychology in May.
“At William and Mary, I volunteered, too, at the police department on campus; at the hospital and at different social service organizations. But I always came back home to Alexandria to the police department every summer,” he said.
IT WAS AT William and Mary that a friend suggested he go to Guyana to work in an orphanage. “She told me about this orphanage that really needed some help and we talked about going there and meeting this amazing woman from Pennsylvania who worked there,” Burke said.
He planned the trip, even obtaining a grant from the school for his excursion. At the last minute, his friend was unable to go.
“I got to Georgetown, the capitol of Guyana, at around midnight and within the first 15 minutes had been confronted by police officers with machine guns in the parking lot and I had been ordered out of my cab and been searched. I felt like I was in a really bad movie,” he said.
He stayed, though, and went to the St. John Bosco Orphanage, run by the Sisters of Mercy. “Everyone looked at me as though I had just dropped in from another planet,” Burke said. “Most of the people in the country are Indian or black and I am very white. It was really strange to be such a minority in such a place,” he said.
The orphanage houses approximately 40 boys between the ages of three and 16. “The most amazing thing was to walk into a room where the kids were preparing a play for the sisters,” he said. “I picked this little three-year-old up in my arms and started tickling him. I found myself surrounded by all of the kids who just wanted to be picked up. I don’t think I had ever realized before how important human contact is.”
The importance of human contact was further emphasized when Burke and other volunteers visited a hospital for patients with leprosy. “One of the volunteers hugged this man who had been joking and talking with us and tears just rolled down his face. He wouldn’t let go of her.
“It’s supposed to be a hospital but isn’t really. It’s just this place where the government sends people with leprosy to die. Healthcare professionals visit them once every week or so but the rest of the time, they are on their own…like the old leper colonies,” he said.
BURKE HAS GONE back to the orphanage and to the hospital every year since 2002 and is going again this year. “They need so many things,” he said. “They have started a school and they don’t have any real supplies. Also, there are no first aid supplies.
“I’m in the process of starting a nonprofit to collect money and supplies for them and will take as many as I can and then ship the rest later,” he said.
Miller and his staff support Burke’s activities. “He clearly wants to help other people,” Miller said. “But he’s realistic. He has dealt with enough around here to be realistic.”
Burke attributes that realism to his volunteer work. “I am so glad that I stepped outside the very protected world in which I have lived,” he said. “I am grateful for that world and can’t believe that I am going to have the opportunity to serve this community as a police officer.
“I don’t really want to specialize yet, although I have been thinking about community policing. I want to be on foot or on a bicycle, not in a car. I want to really interact with people who live here and serve them,” he said.
Burke will leave for Guyana on July 3. When he returns, he will enter the police academy.
“He will do extremely well as a police officer but I don’t expect him to stay long,” Miller said. “He will be here for five years or so and then move on to much bigger things. He’s a remarkable young man.”