ALAMANCE COUNTY, N.C. (WGHP) — One Alamance-Burlington School System student was dealing with abuse, drugs and domestic violence while going through middle school.
More than one decade later, that student is now a Burlington police officer. He credits his success to one program: the Junior Police Academy.
Officer Michael Medley made a return to the program that he says saved his life, and 14 years after being a cadet, he stood in front of the students to share his powerful story.
“I was kind of a delinquent child. I had a lot of behavioral issues,” Medley said. “My mom killed my dad … due to bad circumstances, so that really contributed to a lot of my delinquency and stuff like that.”
Getting in fights, disrespecting teachers and not doing school work were regular occurrences for Medley until the summer of 2009.
“He wasn’t exactly a model cadet in the program, but we could tell he was learning a lot,” said Sgt. Chad Laws from the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office.
Laws has been with the Junior Police Academy for 20 years and remembers the day Medley showed up.
“I honestly never thought he would actually become a police officer,” Laws said.
Eight years after finishing the program, Medley became an officer.
“Going through this and just seeing how friendly these officers were that work in the academy and work with us, it just seemed like they were always there for us when we needed them, so that really changed me,” Medley said.
Now he is on the other side giving the advice.
“Just because you have a bad childhood or things that are going wrong at home, doesn’t mean that you have to act a certain way,” Medley said.
Each summer, about 30 kids from the seven middle schools in the Alamance-Burlington School System are selected for the four-week-summer program. At the end, the students are assigned a mentor for the school year.
“We do activities with the cadets, get them together, follow, track them in school, try to keep in touch with their parents and just see how they are using and applying the skills we tried to teach them during the summer,” Laws said.
Simply showing up for the kids who need it most is a gesture Medley is forever grateful for.
“This program is life-changing … It changed my life,” Medley said.
Organizers say Medley is the definition of a success story.
They have also seen hundreds of others that passed through the program find their own success, whether that’s joining the military, going to college, getting their dream job or starting a family.
