After six months of acting the part, onetime deputy constable Tom Vulakovich officially became Hampton's police chief on Jan. 4 in the Hampton Municipal Building.
A standing-room-only crowd of fellow police officers, local fire police and family members watched as Vulakovich repeated his oath of office before Regis Welsh, retired district justice.
Vic Son, president of Hampton Council, then pinned the chief's new badge on his dress uniform.
“I'm so proud of him. He's done it all on his own,” Lisa Vulakovich said about her husband, a 1981 graduate of Shaler Area High School.
The couple met when she was working with a Hampton student as a mental health case manager and he was Hampton Police Department's resource officer for the Hampton Township School District.
Hampton's new police chief is the younger brother of state Sen. Randy Vulakovich, R-Shaler, a former Shaler police officer.
Tom Vulakovich worked as a deputy constable and police officer in Etna before he joined Hampton Police Department in 1989.
“I always wanted to be a police officer. ... This is above and beyond anything I could have hoped for,” Vulakovich, 52, said about his new $105,000-per-year job as police chief.
“The daylight schedule is very nice. I don't work shifts anymore,” he said. “There's definitely more meetings. There's definitely more paperwork.”
As chief-to-be, Vulakovich recently spent Christmas morning at home after years of volunteering to take other officers' Christmas shifts, so those officers could stay home with their children.
“This was our first Christmas together in 16 years,” said Lisa Vulakovich, who works for Glade Run Lutheran Services.
“He always worked Christmas.”
Last January, Hampton Council promoted Vulakovich from sergeant to captain, and named Vulakovich acting chief when police Chief Mike Pecora retired in May 2015 to spend more time with his two children.
Vulakovich also has two children, Maura, 20, and Brett, 23, a new graduate of the Police Training Academy at the Community College of Beaver County. “Tom was always a self-starter. ... He would come to you with ideas,” said Vulakovich's former boss, retired Hampton police Chief Dan Connolly of McCandless. “He had the ability to rally other people around him and encourage them.”
Connolly especially appreciated Vulakovich's skill at organizing large events. “Tom (would) sweat the details,” Connolly said.
“A lot of guys come into law enforcement with the idea that they're going to fight crime and arrest people and that's not what it's about — it's about service,” Connolly said. “He is a truly unique public servant.”
Hampton Council President Vic Son described Vulakovich as hard-working, dedicated and “well respected by not only the residents and township personnel but by the school district. His cooperation over the years has been greatly appreciated.”
Deborah Deasy is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach her at 724-772-6369 or ddeasy@tribweb.com.
