Get Out of Jail Changed

In His 29-Year Career With the Alexandria Sheriff's Office, David Rocco Has Had a Different View of the City's Transformation

He was a typical Army brat who went to more than a dozen schools by the time he graduated from 12th grade. Growing up, he lived all over the country -- Texas, Oklahoma, Ohio, Kansas, Nebraska -- as his father moved up through the ranks, all the way to brigadier general.

When it was time for David M. Rocco to untether himself and step out on his own, he knew what he wanted to do: not the military. He grew up when the carnage from Vietnam was broadcast nightly in living rooms across the country, and he remembers the call when his father was wounded there.

Instead, Rocco chose law enforcement because it's what he always wanted to do. It also would provide a more stable life.

After 29 years with the Alexandria Sheriff's Department, having risen through the ranks to the No. 2 spot, Rocco, 50, of Woodbridge, is poised to retire in January.

He started as a young deputy when the city jail was in the heart of Old Town in what was originally a Colonial-era stable. Compared with the eight-story behemoth where the city's criminals are now housed, it had a quaint, almost Mayberry-like look.

In those days, the city also had more of a small-town feel. There were drugs and low-level mayhem and the occasional murder, as there is now. But there was not the gang activity, Rocco said. Instead, there was the town drunk, who slept off his binges once or twice a week in the Alexandria jail.

When he'd wake up, sober and regretful, he'd talk about how he was once his high school's big man on campus, a star football player, who went into the Army. Somewhere along the way, his taste for booze overpowered nearly everything else, and soon he was living on the streets when he wasn't under the sheriff's lock and key.

Rocco and the other deputies eventually earned his trust. "It took a while before we got him to agree to go to a VA hospital -- and stay there," Rocco said. "But he did."

And that, in a small way, shaped his view of being a sheriff. Surrounded by drunks and drug abusers and criminals, large and small, he said he sees them as redeemable, lost souls looking for help.

"Everybody falls once in a while," he said. "It makes you more understanding of human nature."

Rocco had his trials as well. He was whacked square in the face with a lead pipe when trying to subdue a suspect. Once, in the late 1980s, while driving home on Interstate 95, he came across a horrific accident involving four tractor-trailers and six cars. One person was dead. A few were bleeding. A truck driver was trapped in his cab while fuel leaked out all around. One of the cars caught fire.

Thankfully, some military emergency medical technicians happened to be driving by. But because of the traffic, it took 20 minutes for more emergency equipment to arrive. That left Rocco in charge of the scene. He triaged patients, directed traffic and tried to restore order; his efforts earned him the Public Safety Valor Award from the city's Chamber of Commerce.

Even more than most parents, Rocco has had to contend with the balance between home and work. In 1998, his wife, Kathy, was killed in a traffic accident, leaving him to raise their three children, then 10, 12 and 14.

"I've always admired how he made his children his priority and sacrificed a lot in his life," said Sheriff Dana Lawhorne. "He was very devoted to his kids."

The highlight of his career, Rocco said, came last year when he was promoted to undersheriff, the highest nonelective position in the department, which comes with a colonel's insignia: an eagle.

Shortly after his promotion, his father had a present for him: a pair of handmade silver eagles. They had belonged to Gen. George S. Patton when he was a colonel, his father said. Patton passed them down to a member of his staff, who then gave them to Rocco's father when he made colonel.

And now they were Rocco's.