Frank Ippolito looks more like a grandfather than a police officer. Instead of a gun, he carries a rosary. Instead of a bulletproof vest, he wears an Evanston Citizen Police Academy baseball cap.
But the Evanston Police Department volunteer saunters down gritty Howard Street like he owns it.
On his daily patrol route he stops at Superior Furniture Resale, 711 Howard St., to sit in his favorite rocking chair, watch a display television and reminisce about the past.
Ippolito has been stationed at the Howard Street Outpost, 633 Howard St., since it opened last summer. For more than 20 years, Ippolito has held numerous EPD volunteer roles. This fall the department finally found a way to thank him.
On Sept. 19 Ippolito humbly received an Illinois TRIAD Senior Citizen Volunteer Award, which honors seniors who donate time and talent to their local police stations. TRIAD is a coalition of police and sheriff’s departments, criminal justice agencies and members of the aging network that annually recognizes the state’s best senior volunteers. About 90 seniors were honored this year.
Evanston has many volunteers but few are as dedicated as Ippolito, said Cmdr. Michael Perry of EPD.
“He has blossomed into a person who really believes in helping people,” Perry said.
Ippolito accepted the award at the TRIAD conference in Bradley, Ill., with EPD officers by his side. He said he became bashful and felt out of place when EPD Chief Frank Kaminsky and the TRIAD chairman presented the plaque to him.
“I thought, ‘I am deeply honored, but I am supposed to be out there on Howard Street with the gangs right now,'” Ippolito said.
Ippolito said most of the other winners were recognized for doing clerical work and filing at local police stations.
“None of the others do any dangerous work,” he said proudly. “None of them works in the trenches like I do.”
The retired Chicago Transit Authority bus driver said most people call him crazy for running the outpost alone. But Ippolito said he is afraid of only three things:
“God, my wife and my doctors — in that order.”
Patrolling his block of Howard on foot, Ippolito detours around a pile of broken glass on the corner of Howard and Custer Avenue.
“See that? A kid did that,” he said. “If I’d had a broom I’d have made him clean it up.”
Ippolito stops to check in around the neighborhood, including the hardware store, convenience store and beauty parlor, before heading back to the outpost.
“Frank is all our eyes,” said Lucy Hilaire of Monika’s Beauty Salon, 707 Howard St. “He is a father to all the kids around here.”
Perry said the involvement of civilians is vital to the police station’s success. He said the divide between officers and citizens is closing due to close cooperation.
“You used to hear, ‘It’s us and them,’ but now it’s all together,” he said. “We all need each other.”