Before Rod Stephan led his baseball teams to victories as a coach at SUNY Old Westbury and the collegiate level, he spent 20 years as a correction officer at Rikers Island. At 27 years old, Stephan took a civil services test following college. He was married and had three children, Robert, Jennifer and Matthew, and knew he had to make a living. At that time, the only experience he had in the field was working the Police Athletic League (P.A.L.). Through P.A.L., Stephan met Gary Krupsky, a former NYPD officer, who took him under his wing.
Stephan played under Krupsky from from age 12 up until he started at Queens College. While working with Krupsky, Stephan was an umpire at baseball games for young players. Krupsky mentored a young Stephan, inspiring him to pursue a career in corrections.
Stephan detailed his career as a correction officer, which consisted of 16 hour days. Each correction officer started out on a “wheel” that included working three different shifts. “The normal day when I started was an eight hour shift,” Stephan said. “When you start, you go on the wheel. You work from 8-4 then from 3-11 then you work a midnight (shift). One week of each. It’s difficult that you have to work those hours. In the beginning when I was there, it was very volatile and you basically were stuck for two tours everyday. You work 16 hours (in a day) then you went home. Six hours (after) you got home, you had to be back at work. You worked four (days) on and two off then you switched the tours. After the week (and) after the four weeks were over, you switched the tours.”
Stephan’s job consisted of going to the gates, relieving inmates for their meal, and working from cellblocks to dorms. When he needed a steady tour schedule since he wanted to see his children, he went to his captain of personnel and asked him to assign him the worst dorm that no other correction officer wanted. Stephan described the dorm he volunteered to work in was as a dangerous environment where close to 10 stabbings a day occurred. There were 120 inmates in the dorm, including Bloods, Crips, Latin Kings and Ghetto Brothers.
“There were inmates setting beds on fire of other guys that are sleeping,” said Stephan. “There are inmates that thanked me and prayed for me every night. Why? Because they could sleep when I was there because I would not allow that on my tour. No one got hurt on my tour for all the years that I worked,” he said.
He also worked on the probe team where he answered calls from people who were in distress. Stephan detailed an encounter he had, for which he was later awarded the Medal of Honor, where his body alarm went off as an inmate had a gun. With the officer’s mentality of serving and protecting, he sprinted towards the scene with just his bare hands. He didn’t have anything to protect him such as pepper spray, a knife, or a billy club. “There’s officers that said, ‘He’s got a gun. He’s got a gun,’” Stephan said.
“I’m going down Broadway, which is the main aisle, and I’m running and I’m going, ‘Throw it down. Throw it down.’ He turns and he’s got a 9 millimeter gun,” he said.
“He sees me and what do I do? It’s all iron beds on each side,” Stephan continued. “All the inmates are under the bed. There’s a guy shot in the corner. What did I do? I just kept going. Luckily just before I got to him, he threw it and I tackled him. We recovered the gun and it was over, but he could have shot me dead. We’re there to protect them.”
After retiring from the NYC Department of Corrections in 2005, Stephan joined the SUNY Old Westbury men’s baseball coaching staff. Four years after joining the staff, he was promoted to head coach. Under Stephan’s tenure, the Panthers accumulated a 171-114-1 record. In 2015, the team claimed their first-ever Skyline Conference Championship and advanced to the NCAA New York Regional Tournament.
As a baseball coach, Stephan preaches respect to his players. “Respect all fear none,” he said. “Respect everyone. I always tell them to respect the umpire, the other team, your coaches, and your parents. Respect everybody and you’re going to be a better person for it. That’s all I want to be is a better person. I seen a lot of horrifying things. I did the whole thing at the World Trade Center where I worked on the clean up and everything. It’s just a horrifying thing. I want people to treat each other right and that’s what I want my team to do too.”
Through the lessons Stephan says brings to his players based off his previous experiences, he’s able to make a positive and lasting impact on them. While it’s a great feeling to have a significant impact, Stephan just feels he did his job.
“I’ve had a lot of players that will tell me, ‘After talking with you and the way you are, I want to coach,’” said Stephan. “I want to teach them to be positive. I’ve had guys that go to the police department and say I want to be cop now. I had guys that were in the academy department and say I don’t want to become a correction officer. I want to become a police officer.”
“There are a lot of guys in this school that they don’t know what they want to do with themselves,” Stephan said. “If I can steer them in the right direction on how to do things and to a productive life after they get their degree here – and my guys are getting their degrees, which is important – then I did my job. I had a lot of lawyers, accountants, [people] in business, and teachers. They’re doing good and they come back to games, which I love.”
