Neighbors: Dorian and Janine Irizarry

It was August 1997, and Garth Brooks was playing a free concert in Central Park.

“It wasn’t the typical New Yorkers jammed into Central Park,” retired New York Police Capt. Dorian Irizarry says.

He was off-duty, and his wife, Janine, was on-duty, riding Herman the quarter horse.

“She always wanted to see how fast he could run,” Dorian Irizarry says.

Fortunately, Central Park West was closed for the concert, which gave the couple a runway on which to test-drive Herman.

“I remember thinking, ‘This is not good. We have a department horse and a department car, what if something happens?’” Dorian Irizarry says. But they did it, anyway.

Dorian drove next to the horse at the same speed it was galloping to gauge how fast Herman could run. They marked him at 35 miles per hour.

“All the cowboys at the concert were yee-hawing as I rode this horse,” Janine remembers.

The couple met when Janine was a newly appointed sergeant and Dorian was a newly appointed captain; he needed a date for special functions the police captain would get invited to, such as the Grammys.

Once, she was working in the mounted unit at the stables, and one of the horses wouldn’t come.

“If we came near him, he’d run the other direction,” Janine says.

Eventually, a bystander helped calm the horse down and capture him.

“Do you know who that was?” Janine’s partner asked her. She did not. “That was (actor) Matthew Modine!”
They love to swap stories — and the exchange can get competitive — and they frequently do so over dinner. A few stories include the time they attended the MTV Music Awards; and when Janine met Pope John Paul II.

“We can exchange stories every day,” Janine says.

And, then, there are other stories. Dorian spent much of his career in narcotics.

The most impact he made was on the narcotics scene in Manhattan. There were thousands of arrests made.

“We never went home,” he says.

“I retired in ’99 after 20 years with the police department, and I swore I’d never do any police work again,” he says.

He went into corporate high-rise security, working as the corporate director of security and director of operations for Mulligan Security for 10 years after that.

Janine has her own stories. She was assigned to internal affairs human resources at a downtown Manhattan office building and was working there on Sept. 11.

“My desk — and office — became the (headquarters of the) 1-800 number for missing people,” she says. She remembers lines of people waiting to donate blood outside a nearby hospital.

For three months, working 12 to 15 hours daily, seven days a week, Janine and her co-workers answered phones and made a list of missing people and casualties.

“It’s not something I like to re-live,” she says shaking her head.

The couple moved to Longboat Key, where they are no longer working every holiday, weekends, long hours and tons of overtime. They started a home security business, LBK Home Services, that checks up on homes while owners are away. But, for the most part, they live a quiet life.

“That’s what we wanted — to have a nice, peaceful, uninterrupted retreat,” Janine says of their retirement.