Congratulations and goodbyes:
Cop with cancer gets a warm send-off for an early retirement prompted by a disease that might leave him with only weeks to live.
It’s surprising that cancer could ever catch Sebastian Raclaw. He moved too quickly.
“His nickname was Ritalin,” said David Feldmeier, Sebastian’s squad partner when they were young officers on the Milwaukee Police Department.
“He would come to work like, ‘What do we got next? What do you need us to do?’ He was just go, go, go, and he’s been like that his entire career.”
That 21-year career saw Raclaw rise through a variety of assignments to become a detective, sergeant and finally a lieutenant supervising drug enforcement agents.
And as demanding as all that sounds, the fight of his life has been waged the past five years since a pain in his belly was discovered to be a rare and aggressive cancer.
Friday was his retirement party. He’s only 40 years old, but too ill and frail to continue working.
“This is certainly not the way I had wanted to retire and finish it out. But sometimes we get challenges thrown at us and we deal with them as they come,” he said in a brief speech to the dozens of police colleagues in attendance.
They had come to congratulate Raclaw, but the sad truth is they were also there to say goodbye. Doctors have said he likely has only weeks to live. “I don’t want to talk too much about it, because I know we want to have this a positive day. But this guy has shown a lot of us how to get through adversity in some of the most challenging times of anybody’s life,” Assistant Chief Bill Jessup said as he presented a distinguished service award on behalf of Chief Edward Flynn.
There were congratulatory proclamations from the city and state and the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area enforcement program, Raclaw’s final assignment. And everyone enjoyed a lunch of pasta and salad.
Raclaw’s particular cancer is called signet ring cell adenocarcinoma. His wife, Angela, a teacher, told me doctors have removed more than 200 tumors and various organs from his abdomen in multiple surgeries and applied powerful chemotherapy to buy him time.
He has pushed through pain and fatigue to stay involved in the lives of the couple’s daughter Isabella, 9, and son Noah, 6. The family has received an outpouring of love and support from family, friends and their police family. There’s a Facebook page called Rally for Raclaw and a GoFundMe campaign online with the same name for those who want to support them financially.
Raclaw created an abdominal cancer research fund in his name at the Medical College of Wisconsin to help find a way to stop this disease. With help from an annual golf outing sponsored by the Milwaukee Police Supervisors Organization and other events, the effort has raised $45,000, he said.
Did I mention that Raclaw still finds time to be a fan and I dare say friend of Vanilla Ice?
“I somehow became a groupie of him,” he laughed. “I got the opportunity to perform on stage as the scary clown whose responsibility is to take water and throw it into the audience.”
I met Sean Raclaw, Sebastian’s younger brother, at the party. He is a Milwaukee Police Department sergeant. As boys, the seeds for a career in law enforcement were planted by a friendly officer in their Milwaukee neighborhood who handed them baseball cards from time to time.
Sean called his brother a very good role model and leader, and said a healthy spirit of competition has existed between them going back to childhood.
Feldmeier, the former squad partner and now a lieutenant in District 4, has remained a close friend to Raclaw through the years. It’s been painful yet inspiring for him to watch his pal stare down cancer.
“Last summer, we thought while sitting in the ICU that this is it. This is the end. Nobody knew what to say. Nobody knew what to do. And in September we’re at a golf outing together, and he’s out there on the course swinging a golf club,” he said.
A fighter, people call Raclaw. But the struggle is nearing an end.
“I’ve had more than enough time to prepare,” he told me. “It’s not like it’s just thrown at me. But it’s difficult.”
A fitting quote often attributed to Bob Marley appears on the websites to rally support for Raclaw and his family:
“You never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice.”
“This is certainly not the way I had wanted to retire and finish it out. But sometimes we get challenges thrown at us and we deal with them as they come.” SEBASTIAN RACLAW