Boys Club in South Phoenix and I became a member of some of their sports programs. My softball coach was Bill Crawford, an on-duty police officer with the Phoenix Police Community Aware program. Another officer part of the Aware program, Jim Milstead, was one of my boxing team trainers. Another trainer, Ted “Bear” Hutchinson, worked for the Arizona Highway Patrol. Plus their were a number of other officers assigned to work with the Boys Club’s youth and some of the officers were just volunteering their time.
Therefore, for me, my memories of police working with young people to the betterment of the community was very positive. So I eventually became a police officer after completing the requirements of the police academy. I worked as a patrol officer for six and a half years. After taking detective training courses, I worked as a domestic violence detective and I did that for two years.
I eventually tested for my dream job of being a robbery investigations detective. Some people want to be the chief of police, others a canine handler, others a SWAT team member. But I wanted to be a robbery detective and I studied diligently and long for that position.
I worked as a robbery detective for the next sixteen and a half years. Along with my colleagues I spent several hours past our regular forty-hour week working intense cases with other agencies and with our brother police officers from Mexico, investigating kidnapping/extortion crimes due to illegal but profitable border crossing business. The Phoenix Police Robbery Detail, which I was a member, did not only work regular robbery cases, we also investigated, bank robberies, home invasions, kidnappings, false imprisonments, extortions, the aforementioned human trafficking cases and other armed and unarmed theft related crimes. We worked very well with the FBI, ICE and our fellow local and statewide law enforcement agencies. So after twenty-five years of serving the public trust, I retired honorably and I left knowing I did my best in serving the citizens and the visitors to the City of Phoenix. The career was not pleasant all the time, but overall it was a good ride.
During and after my police career I became an event planner by necessity, by being the ABLE President and committee Chairman of a number of organizations and by being active in police organizations, my high school reunions, family reunions and my boxing team reunion. I was, and am still, the longest serving President of ABLE, the Arizona Black Law Enforcement Employees. Through this organization we provided criminal justice training to our members and our peers in the law enforcement community, locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. We provided quarterly and seasonal local training to our members and others, scholarships to high school, college and university students in our state and critical support for those who were considering law enforcement as a career option.
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accomplished this through personal contacts, our ABLE Membership meetings, our ABLE Annual Conferences and by attending national and regional police conferences, through the sharing of ideas and strategies of police recruitment, officer retentions and police promotions.
Through ABLE our conferences were attended frequently by law enforcement professionals from other states and internationally, specifically friends and associates from Canada and the United Kingdom. This encouraged me and our committees to always provide a professional conference and a memorable event that caused the attendees to want to return the following year.
My years since I have retired have kept me busy as I continued working as an organizer and as an event planner to lead a few more ABLE Conferences and I became the chairperson and event planner for my high school reunions, three national family reunions and the forty-six year celebration and reunion of our boxing team from the Kieckhefer Boys Club. I memorialized the majority of the gatherings with conference journals or memory booklets which were keepsakes and included promotions and advertisements from the professional community.
I have now embarked in other ventures as my life journey continues. I have been a good student of watching and absorbing the motivational speeches of those who encourage us to get the best out of this one life that we have on this earth and I have become a team member to spread the good news through music, speeches and motivational events that will empower and edify the attendees to pursue their dreams.
Many of us have dreams that we have let go by the wayside or have cast them in the sea of forgetfulness. But many of us still hear that dream calling us on the inside. We often passively think about it or resign it to the “if I could have, would have, should have” pile. But that dream was given to you and nobody else can manifest that dream because it is yours. Don’t take it to the cemetery with you. We have to plan to bring it from out of our minds and hearts and launch it into manifestation because others are to see your dream that you have been given to show us. You are the manager of it and you can do it. You are cable of doing it.
However, in order to fulfill our dreams you have to be of good health, or at least the best health that you can be, with no excuses. To manifest the desires of your heart requires that you have to be actively involved in procuring it. Your body is the machine by which your mind and your soul will manifest your dreams. But if you are not healthy, especially if you are the reason for not being healthy, it becomes more difficult to process your dream. So it is required that we treat ourselves better in order to feel better and to live longer so that we can see our dreams come to fruition.
We need to rid ourselves of the fast food from the convenience restaurants and do two things that the will promote our health, which are the things that the partakers of the Mediterranean Diet already know: proper food selection and healthy food preparation. A lot of fruit and vegetables, fish, lean meats and less deep frying food in vegetable oils, but instead either, baking, grilling, boiling or basting your meals which is a much healthier way to prepare food to ingest into your body.
I also have to offer motivation through singing and public speaking. I have accomplished a number of speeches by the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other great orators whose messages of love, civil rights and humanity still ring loud to us today.
I have sung the National Anthem at several venues including the Arizona Diamondbacks Stadium, the Phoenix Suns Arena, the Arizona Memorial Coliseum and at several law enforcement venues. I have sung the great historical anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing” at multiple events and have provided comforting melodies at memorial services for families, friends and love ones.
I like to help people to smile with soul ballads, jazz melodies and I do know a few opera arias to entertain you. I believe God Almighty likes us to sing to Him too and thanks to my mother, I grew up singing praise songs.
I do all these things to benefit us all and to make a better world, while we have the ability and time to do it. So let’s continue to pursue our dreams by staying healthy, eating well and exercising.
If I can be of service to you through motivational engagements, public speeches or jazz singing please contact me by phone, email or the contact form below.
One of the greatest skills to have, with a deep understanding and insight into the hunger of mankind is to have the ability to bring people together for an earth-shaking, edifying event and to leave them with an expectancy to come back for more and to bring someone with them so they can also be edified.
With much respect,
Terry Yahweh
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