Scott Rodriguez, a Freeport High School senior and a student at the Nassau BOCES Joseph M. Barry Career and Technical Education Center (Barry Tech), was named a winner in the 2007 Nassau County “Police Commissioner For-A-Day” Essay Contest. His winning essay answered the question:  As Police Commissioner, how would you ensure the safety of Nassau County residents should a severe hurricane strike the county?

Sponsored by the Nassau County Police Reserves, the contest allowed Rodriguez and 15 other winners to spend a day at Nassau County Police Headquarters for an awards ceremony and a chance to shadow a police officer.  Rodriguez’s essay was so well written that he was selected by the department to be “Chief of Department For-A-Day.”

“The whole day was awesome,” Rodriguez said. “Each winner was placed with a different officer. I didn’t expect to place as high as I did,” he said. “I was really impressed with [the chief’s] responsibilities.”

Scott found out he won from his mother who opened the notification letter. “I was very excited when I found out, especially since I was the only person to win at Freeport High School or at Barry Tech,” he said. There were 16 winners out of 200 entries.

Rodriguez said when he was writing his essay, he went “out of the box” to describe how to survive a hurricane, how to evacuate and what is needed to protect one’s home.

“I tried to relate Hurricane Katrina to Long Island,” he said. “I tried to picture myself in that situation.”

Irene Steinman, Rodriguez’s advisor and English teacher at Barry Tech said, “Scott had a very good plan for covering all the bases if a disaster was imminent. His essay was over 1,000 words long and it was a process of writing and rewriting. He put a lot of hard work into it.”

After Rodriguez expressed to his high school principal, Ms. Kimberlee Pierre, that he had an interest in detective work, Pierre recommended that he take Police Science classes at Barry Tech. Rodriguez takes his core classes at Freeport High School in the morning and goes to Barry Tech in the afternoon. He hopes to intern at a police station over the summer, and one day become a detective. He also plans to attend Molloy College in the fall and study business management.