Keeping ma by his heart
New cop to wear badge of honor
Here’s a holiday tale to fill every empty stocking in the city. On Friday, when the NYPD Academy’s Class of 2013 graduates in Madison Square Garden, a young rookie named Frank Del Vecchio Jr. will inherit his police officer mother’s badge No. 5098. To imagine the future of this young cop who holds a master’s degree in criminal justice, let’s go back and see the kind of stuff he’s made of.
In January 1981, Esther Acevedo and Frank Del Vecchio met and fell in love as young recruits at the NYPD police academy. After graduating, Esther was assigned to the 84th Precinct in Brooklyn, where she did patrol and administrative work. Frank was assigned to the 19th Precinct on the Upper East Side.
On Feb. 13, 1982, Esther and Frank married and Frank William Del Vecchio Jr. was born on Feb. 10, 1988, and Esther and Frank raised him in their Marine Park, Brooklyn, home.
“Esther was transferred to the Application Processing Division, where she was promoted to detective,” says Frank. “After 11 years at the 19th Precinct, I was transferred to Major Case Narcotics, where in 18 months I was promoted to detective 3rd grade, then to detective 2nd grade, where I stayed for the rest of my 25 years on the job.”
Theirs was a fairy-tale love story between two of New York's Finest.
Then in October 1992, Frank came home from work to find family and friends gathered around a glassy-eyed Esther. “She told me she had breast cancer,” Frank says. “I thought it was the end of the world because I loved Esther so much. And because in addition to being a great cop she was a wonderful wife and an even more amazing mom to our son Frank Jr.”
Esther suffered through chemo and radiation and a year later was declared cancer-free.
“Esther went back to work, put on weight, and even grew her hair back,” says Frank.
Frank Jr. grew up a happy kid but before his 10th birthday doctors found a new spot in one of his mother's breasts. “Esther had a bone marrow transplant and weeks of radiation,” says Frank. “The doctors gave her a five-year timeline. She made all her oncologist appointments. She always said she was OK. I clung to that 1% chance of a miracle. But when the cancer ancer reached Esther’s brain I knew I was going to have to find the courage to tell our son that he was going g to lose his mom.”
In January 1998, Frank walked Frank Jr. into a private room of Methodist Hospital in Park Slope where they could be completely alone. “I looked my son in the eye and tried to find the words to tell him m the truth,” Frank said. “Instead my boy looked me right back in the eye and said, ‘I know, Dad. Mommy told me.’ As weak as she was, Esther had taken the weight of telling our son she was dying off my shoulders.”
On Jan. 26, 1998, on a bright Sunday morning that was also her 17th anniversary as a NYPD police officer, Detective Esther Del Vecchio and Frank Del Vecchio, who had fallen in love in the Police Academy, and married, and raised a son in the city they served were alone in her hospital room when she died.
“Esther’s boss, a great cop named Chief Bill Taylor, arranged for a full police funeral with highways closed and helicopters flying overhead on the way to St. Raymond’s Cemetery (in the Bronx),” says Frank. “The NYPD brass also allowed me to carry Esther’s original police officer's badge even after I retired in March of 2005.” After Frank Jr.
graduated James Madison High School in Brooklyn, Frank moved to Tampa. “Frank Jr. received his BA in legal studies from the University of Central Florida in 2010,” says Frank. “He was accepted into two law schools down there. But his heart was back in New York. And so in May 2012, Frank Jr. received his MA in criminal justice from John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, where I had also graduated before joining NYPD in 1981, where I met and fell in love with Esther in the academy.”
On Friday, Dec. 27, Frank Del Vecchio Jr., proud son of two of our very finest of New York’s Finest, will graduate at Madison Squ Square Garden as a p police officer of the N NYPD.
Over his heart on his crisp new NYPD blue uniform he will p pin his mother’s ba badge, No. 5098.
“Esther will be w with our son every da day on the job,” says Fr Frank. “He will wear he her badge with ho honor.”
Lucky us.