NY Post: "True-Blue Grads, Rookie Already a Rail Hero"

By Alana Casanova-Burgess and Perry Chiaramonte

More than 900 new cops graduated from the Police Academy yesterday in a Madison Square Garden ceremony - but at least one rookie got an early taste of the action.

Shaheed Ahmad told classmates how, a little more than two weeks ago, he helped pull a woman from the subway tracks at the Union Square station.

"At first it was scary, but it was just something inside me that made me react," he said. "It gave me an idea of what's expected of me out there - to react for the better good."

On Dec. 11, Ahmad was on his way to the academy when a woman fell onto the tracks.

Ahmad was lowered to the tracks and, with the help of a good Samaritan, was able to lift the victim out just before a northbound train rumbled into the station.

Ahmad, who will work at the 70th Precinct covering Flatbush, was a graduate of the most diverse class of recruits in NYPD history.

Twenty percent of the 914 graduates were born overseas, according to the NYPD, and the class had natives of 52 nations.

Among the foreign-born graduates was class valedictorian Karolina Wierzchowska, 27, who came to the United States in 1999. She said being a police officer has been a lifelong dream but "in Poland we didn't have such opportunities."

Many of the new cops will start their careers policing troubled areas, in a program known as Operation Impact.

Originally printed in the New York Post on December 28, 2007.