March 28, 2024

On the Retirement of Mark Rossi

Posted

At 2:00 in the morning, Christmas Eve, 2004, my wife and I awoke, not to a “clattering of hoof beats” on our roof, but to the screams of our 4-year-old daughter. Rushing to her bedroom, we found her trying to stand up, but falling over and yelling, “please make the room stop spinning around daddy!”

Trying to stay calm while she twitched in my arms all I could think was “aneurysm!”

My wife called 911 and within minutes, in through the front door came a giant in blue, med. kit in one hand, teddy bear in the other. That Officer quietly and quickly took control of the situation, calming not only our little girl, but my wife and me as well. The EMT’s arrived almost as quickly, and we spent Christmas at Hasbro Children’s Hospital tending to nothing worse than what was an extremely bad ear infection.

That night is memorable for many obvious reasons, but one that remained important to my entire family was our meeting Officer (eventually Deputy Chief) Mark Rossi. He was known as the “teddy bear policeman” for several years but became a close friend of our family and continued to be a professional that we, and the people of our great Town could rely on in any situation.

Having lived in Rehoboth for 21 years, I have had many opportunities to interact with the men and women of the RPD and our fire and rescue folks. They are all tops in my book! Mark Rossi is a tremendous representative of our public safety organizations, and he will be so greatly missed in his well-deserved retirement. Thank you for always being there for us Mark!

Clark Curtis

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