The Man Behind the Badge: Norfolk's Mike O'Toole Honored for Decades of Service
By Harry Minium
NORFOLK – Mike O’Toole grew up in hard scrabble Ocean View, long before redevelopment in East Beach turned much of Norfolk’s Chesapeake Bay community into a playground for the well-heeled.
It was a working-class area with a ton of crime, poverty, homelessness and often, a fair share of despair, when he was a kid in the 1960s and 1970s.
Many of his friends went into the wrong direction. They dropped out of high school, got involved in drugs or with gangs.
But not Mike. His parents kept him busy. His spare time was filled playing football, baseball and basketball for Holy Trinity Catholic School or Naval Air Station Little League, and then later, Norfolk Catholic High.
From the age of 15, he worked, mostly at Pollard’s Chicken in Bayview.
His father retired while Mike was in high school, and after putting two older siblings through school, told Mike had to earn his money for tuition, fees and books when he enrolled at Old Dominion University. So, he worked six days a week, from four until closing, frying chicken. He got up the next morning Monday through Friday and commuted to ODU.
He would come home from work caked in grease. “My dad would get so mad when we did the laundry because my clothes would back up the drains,” he said.
“The thing is, my dad telling me that I had to pay my own way through school, that was the best thing that ever happened to me. I wasn’t applying myself. I needed a push.
“Because I was always working, I didn’t have much of a social life and that was a good thing. I was a street kid. It was the time when cocaine became popular and a lot of my friends stubbed their toes. A lot of my friends ended up in big trouble. That could have been me.
“But I was too busy to get into trouble.”
But not too busy to see what was going on around him and dedicate his life to try to help those who fall through the cracks of the legal justice system.
After graduating from ODU, he aspired to be an FBI agent. “I wanted to be Don Johnson in Miami Vice driving a $100,000 car,” he said.
His career turned out to be a lot less glamorous. He spent a short time working in Norfolk’s probation and parole department before he joined the Norfolk Sheriff’s office. And in the 40 years since, he used his experience as a kid in Ocean View as motivation to help people.
He has created numerous programs, including some copied by cities and counties all over the country. “He created programs that hold (inmates) accountable while still allowing them to be treated with care and keep them employed,” said his boss, Norfolk Sheriff Joe Baron.
“Michael O’Toole has done so much to help inmates get rehabilitated and back into society.”
Early on, he created Norfolk’s work release program. Later, he created one of the nation’s first electronic monitoring programs, which allows non-violent offenders to work and be with their families. It was the first in the state and by some accounts, the second in the USA.
He created the inmate work force program, in which armed deputies take inmates to work largely at community events or events on city property. That allows them to develop a work ethic and make some money prior to being released, and also to escape the claustrophobic confines of Norfolk’s jail. He helped found Norfolk’s drug and mental health courts, and at the behest of Baron and his wife, Jennifer, to establish a program called Camp Hope to help victims of domestic violence.
He runs youth football and basketball camps sponsored by Joe Baron and he helped begin a program with Dennis Ellmer, founder of Priority Automotive, that trained nearly 100 Norfolk inmates at Tidewater Community College’s Virginia Beach campus to become auto mechanics.
He’s served on numerous boards, including the Norfolk drug, community services and criminal justice boards, as well as president of the Cosmopolitan Club. And for 16 years, he served as a part-time professor at ODU, teaching criminal justice courses six hours a week.
Promoted to the title of Colonel a few years ago, he’s No. 2 in the sheriff’s office, answering only to Baron. Yet he’s always kept a low profile.
“Mike has always been focused on helping others, to making Norfolk a better place,” Ellmer said.
“He never wants to be in the limelight. He never asked for any appreciation. He likes to be quiet and remain in the background. If you tell him what a good guy he is, he demurs, he changes the subject.
“Mike has been an unassuming leader in Norfolk for decades. To me, he is the Norfolk Sheriff’s department.”
Like it or not, the quiet guy who likes to stay in the background will stand at a podium next week in front of hundreds of people and accept one of ODU’s most prestigious awards.
He will receive the Jack Frost Alumni Service Award, given to an alumnus for leadership and service in their communities, on Thursday, Oct. 29, at the annual ODU Alumni Association awards dinner at Chartway Arena.
Click here for information on the ODU alumni banquet The award has been won by many dear to O’Toole, including former women’s basketball star Nancy Lieberman and ESPN sportscaster Jay Harris. But as he was looking over the list of past honorees, he stopped at 2009, when Peter G. Decker Jr., the deceased attorney and philanthropist, received the award. Uncle Pete, as he was known, was close to Mike’s parents. Pete III, Decker’s oldest son, was a childhood friend of Mike’s. “It blows me away to be considered in the same vein with Uncle Pete,” Mike said.
“When I first started out in the sheriff’s office, he rolled into my office, sat down and told me I’ve got to care about people.” “’I like what you’re doing so far,’ he said. I know you’re out arresting people and by doing so, you’re making Norfolk safer. But you’ve got to care about them, take care of them, if you can.’
“That’s what I’ve done my entire career.”
And that includes his family.
The call from the North Carolina State Police came on a cold winter afternoon in 1997. Hank O’Toole, Mike’s older brother, had been involved in a terrible wreck. He was with three friends headed to play golf in Myrtle Beach when a speeding tractor trailer barreled into the rear end of their car.
The car was hit with such force that it rolled over several times into the median and burst into flames.
Hank, who was my wrestling teammate at ODU, was in the back seat and survived. So did Von Karl Freudenburg, a Norfolk resident.
Chuck Patterson, also a passenger, and a football teammate of mine at Norview High School, and Luther Thomas Vellines Jr., the driver, were killed.
Freudenburg managed to recover in a few months. It would take Hank O’Toole years to recover. His body was badly burned and he was put into an induced coma for two weeks. The recovery treatments were often painful.
“He blew up so much while in the coma that when my dad and I passed his room at the hospital, we didn’t recognize him,” Mike O’Toole said.
After six months in a burn unit in North Carolina, Hank was about to be discharged into a rehabilitation center.
“I knew if he went into a rehab center, he was going to die,” Mike said. “Emotionally, he was in a bad place. He wasn’t ready for that.”
So, he and his wife, Beth O’Toole, took him to their Ocean View home and brought him back to life.
They showered him and applied medicine to his skin daily and changed his bandages twice per day for nearly a year. They fed him, encouraging him and took him to physical therapy appointments, all while working full-time – Beth worked in corporate offices at Chartway Credit Union.
“What Mike and Beth did for me, it was so far beyond what most people would do, even for family,” Hank O’Toole said.
“We never looked on it as a burden,” Beth said. “It’s what you do for family.
“There are times when I look back on it and wonder how we did that while both working full-time.
“Mike was such a caregiver. It’s one of the many things I love about him.”
It was Mike’s unselfish commitment to help others that brought him together with Beth more than three decades ago.
She was divorced and a single mom and not anxious to get involved with anyone. But then she saw Mike coaching a team of young boys at St. Pius Catholic School, it made an impression on her.
Mike took over coaching a team of elementary school kids after the coach quit.
“I show up to the first practice and none of the boys are taller than 4-foot-11,” Mike said. “I looked over at the girl’s team, and they had players taller than our tallest.
“We got blown out in most of our games.”
He went to a four-corners in the team’s last game, draining the last three minutes off the clock, much to the chagrin of parents of the other team, including one mother who walked onto the court to protest. But the Pirates had their first win. “They celebrated like they had won the championship,” Beth said. “I watched Mike and could see how encouraging he was, how good he was to those boys. It was so funny watching him jump up and down with them.”
Some of her friends tried setting them up for a date for more than a year. Finally, one of Mike’s players said to him: “Coach, do you want to go out with Melissa’s Mom?”
That finally happened in 1990, but it took a lot of urging from friends to get them together. Friends separately invited them to dinner at Franco’s Italian Restaurant and seated Mike and Beth together.
“We’re not together,” Beth replied when a friend walked into the restaurant and saw them.
But sparks flew. They stood in Bromley Shopping Center parking lot talking until 5 a.m. When her daughter, Melissa, was involved in a car accident a few days later, Mike called asking about her.
“The last thing I wanted at that point was to be involved with somebody,” Beth said. “But when he called me, that told me what kind of person he was.
“I wanted to be so careful with anyone who I brought into Melissa’s life. But Mike, he had all of the qualities to be a lifelong partner and a father.”
They finally went on a date, by themselves, and a year later they were married and have been married now for 35 years. Marriage is difficult even in the best of situations. But ten years ago, as they were preparing for a vacation to Disney World, Mike and Beth were tested in a way most couples aren’t. As the couple were preparing to take Melissa to Disneyworld, he felt tired and was in pain. When he returned from Orlando, he went to the doctor and learned that he had several broken bones, including two broken ribs. His kidneys had begun to shut down.
It took weeks of tests before he learned the truly bad news, that he had Multiple Myeloma, a particularly deadly form of cancer that attacks white blood cells in the bone marrow.
The average survival rate was three to five years.
As always, they attacked this crisis as a family. And through it all, Mike would learn just how much he was beloved in the ODU athletic community.
Mike grew up watching ODU basketball. He dreamed of playing for the Monarchs, but the guy who played center for Holy Trinity stood just 5-foot-8. He knew by his junior year he would never play for ODU, or anyone else.
So, when he had worked up the ladder enough to make some money and have some influence, he gave back to ODU in a big way. He joined the Decker family in purchasing a suite at Foreman Field when the Monarchs began playing football in 2009. He’s been an ODU basketball season ticket holder since he was a student in the 1980s.
He gives generously to ODU not only with his money, but his time. His deputies set up tents and tables for ODU fundraisers and then clean up afterwards.
“Beth didn’t go to ODU,” he said, “but she’s even a bigger fan than me.”
Former long-time ODU men’s basketball coach Blaine Taylor, now a major gifts officer for the University’s athletic fundraising organization, said “I’ve never heard Mike say now when he’s been asked to do something by ODU.
“He always had a can-do attitude. And he’s got really good values.
“You can’t hardly walk out of a function or a golf tournament anywhere in Hampton Roads that he’s not scurrying around making sure everyone fed or taken care.”
The sheriff’s office made a major commitment to the Charity Bowl, which began as a tackle football game five decades ago as a fundraiser for local kids’ charities, and now is a fundraiser held in conjunction with the ODU spring football game. It has raised more than $7 million for kids’ charities under Ellmer’s tutelage.
“Mike gets everything done for Old Dominion and always has,” Ellmer said. “And not just ODU. When I helped redo the athletics facility at Norfolk State, I supplied the materials and the inmates provided the labor. I paid the inmates to do the work. “He’s been with us for every Charity Bowl and our golf tournaments. He brings the sheriffs to do crowd control for our Charity Bowl. He always arrives early and leaves late. “Whenever we need something, Mike anticipates it, and is there like a leprechaun.”
When ODU officials learned of O’Toole’s illness, they poured their hearts out to him. Then football coach Bobby Wilder texted him regularly during six months of treatments. President John Broderick also reached out to him frequently.
Men’s basketball coach Jeff Jones had his team reach out to Mike through social media. So did dozens of coaches, administrators, athletes and alumni.
“I called and texted him to make sure he knew someone was thinking about him, and praying for him, that someone was in his corner,” Jone said.
“Mike has always been the guy behind the scenes. So many people do it to have their egos stroked. Mike does it just to help people.”
The outpouring of support helped O’Toole survive.
He was treated with stem cells, and had to be in total isolation for 90 days. Treatments essentially destroyed his immune system and then slowly, replaced his stem cells through transfusions.
Beth chose to keep him at home for his treatments.
“I wouldn’t allow anyone to visit him other than Melissa, not even the grand kids. He has always been thin and weighed just 160 pounds when his ordeal began.
He lost 35 pounds during stem cell treatment, which required frequent blood transfusions. He got weak and sick.
“There were days when all I could hold down was 12 ounces of water,” he said.
“I got through it. Everyone in the sheriff’s office was so supportive. I can’t thank Joe Baron enough for his support during that time.”
He’s back up to 150 pounds and still working hard.
The cancer is still there – it’s an incurable disease. He takes a chemo pill daily. Doctors say he’s doing well and could live a long time.
Friends say he works too hard.
“He not only runs the fourth largest jail in Virginia, he is involved in more charities and civic organizations than I can list,” said Pete Decker III. “He is one of the most influential and effective fundraisers and organizers of events that benefit so many people.
“He loves kids. You can always count on him to raise money for children in need.”
“He’s a fixer,” Beth added. “If you have a problem, he tries to fix it for you. He’s gone to work early in the morning and doesn’t get home until late at night.”
Beth retired a few years ago, but Mike says he has no plans to retire anytime soon.
“When Uncle Pete sat down with me early in my career, he told me that I would make my father proud,” Mike said. “And that meant the world to me.
“I’ve tried all of my life to do things the right way, the way both my parents would have wanted me to do.
“I think there’s still a lot left for me to do, a lot of people I can help.”
And that’s good news for everyone in Hampton Roads.
Minium is a retired journalist living in Berlin, Germany. Reach him at harryminiumjr@gmail.com
