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Wednesday, March 30, 2011 – Daily News – 5B 30 years later, police chief recalls taking a bullet for Reagan CHICAGO (MCT) — Thirty years ago Wednes- day, Tim McCarthy set out for work at the White House in a brand-new suit, the nicest one he'd ever owned. McCarthy can't recall why he and his wife, both from the same working- class neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, decided he should splurge on a decent suit. He remembers it was a wool-cotton blend, sort of blue-gray. Agents on the presi- dential detail in Washing- ton, where McCarthy had been stationed for two of his 10 years with the Secret Service, typically ordered suits from a tai- lor in Florida; send your measurements and a few weeks later a box arrived with a polyester jacket and pants. Sometimes three guys on the same detail would be wearing identical lousy suits. "No one noticed the Secret Service anyway," McCarthy said during a recent interview at the Orland Park, Ill., police station, where he has worked as chief for 17 years. But on March 30, 1981, McCarthy was walking beside Ronald Reagan as the president and his entourage left the Washington Hilton. And on that day, McCarthy became the most famous Secret Ser- vice agent alive. At 2:27 p.m., as Rea- gan walked to his limo outside the Hilton, John Hinckley Jr. stepped out from a crowd less than 20 feet from the president and raised a cheap .22- caliber pistol. Press secretary James Brady was felled by the first shot, Washington, D.C., police Officer Tom Delahanty by the second. Other police and bystanders fell away as McCarthy spun to face the gunman. The third shot was on a line to hit Reagan, a vector on which McCarthy had immedi- ately crouched in a line- backer stance. The bullet struck McCarthy in the chest, spinning him in a half-pirouette and knocking him to the ground. The fourth bullet slammed into the limo door as Secret Service agent Jerry Parr lunged inside with the president. The fifth glanced off the frame of the limo, strik- ing Reagan under the arm on the ricochet. The sixth glanced off the pave- ment. Less than five seconds after the first shot, the limo squealed away to George Washington Uni- versity Hospital, where Reagan nearly died from the wound. Secret Service agents in training still watch video from those few seconds, Parr said, as an example of a well-exe- cuted "cover and evacu- ate" scenario. Protocol changes and metal detec- tors have made it nearly impossible for someone to get near the president with a gun, so the real value of the footage is to give new agents a reminder of the dangers of their job. No agent has taken a bullet for a presi- dent since. "If Tim's not there, I'm sure that either I or the president would have been hit (by the third shot) that day," said Parr, who retired from the Secret Service in 1985 and became a minister, confident that God had put him on Earth for a special purpose. "The only thing between the president and this guy was (McCarthy's) big Irish body." McCarthy is 61 now. His hair is thinner, his ing, before he returned to the Chicago field office for good. He retired in 1993 as the agent in charge of the Chicago Division. He and his wife, Carol, settled in Orland Park, where McCarthy was hired as chief of police in 1994. A flip of a coin had put McCarthy in the line of fire on March 30, 1981. That morning, there MCT photo Orland Park Police Chief Tim McCarthy sits at his office in Orland Park, Ill., March 24. face more fleshy and ruddy than it was 30 years ago. He has recounted the assassina- tion attempt probably thousands of times, and during interviews his answers come rapid-fire, not impatiently, but with the speed of a practiced response. The most common question is, "Why did you do it?" In truth, he had done the same thing hundreds of times in training drills until step- ping in front of a bullet became a reflex. "No agent thinks it will happen to them. If you stopped to think about it, you probably wouldn't do it. It's not a rational act," he said. The bullet that hit McCarthy struck his rib, punctured his lung and diaphragm and raked his liver. He never got back to running five to seven miles a day as he did before he was shot. While he was recuper- ating, friends in Chicago suggested McCarthy retire immediately, return to the city of his birth a national hero and run for Congress. "I was a young guy with a family. I said, 'What if I lose?' I'd have been out of a job," McCarthy said. Instead, McCarthy took four transfers in the 10 years after the shoot- was an extra agent on McCarthy's shift, and he and agent Joe Trainor decided a coin toss would determine who would go with the Reagan detail that afternoon. Win, and McCarthy could spend the after- noon catching up on paperwork. Lose, and he would have to expose his new suit to the drizzle on the way to and from the Hilton. Asked if he ever wished the coin toss had gone the other way, McCarthy gives an uncharacteristic — but still brief — pause before answering. "No," he said. "I'm glad I got to do it. I'm glad I got to do what I was trained to do. I wouldn't want it another way." The busiest local information website in Tehama County! • 338,883 monthly page views St. Elizabeth Community Hospital A member of CHW 2550 Sister Mary Columba Dr., Red Bluff (530) 529-8000 http://www.redbluff.mercy.org • 49,162 unique visitors PHYSICAL 2490 S. 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