DANVERS, Mass. — The use of a blood thinner after four knee surgeries nearly derailed Mike Chase’s dream of becoming a police officer.

It’s a dream that Chase, 37, had nurtured since childhood, and it’s not hard to see where he got the idea. His father, Stuart “Stu” Chase, was a local police officer in Danvers, Massachusetts, for 35 years, and served as chief from 2002 to 2004. After Stu Chase retired in Danvers, he went on to become the police chief in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. 

Adding length to the family’s public service record, Joseph Merrill, Mike Chase’s great-great grandfather, was the Danvers police chief from 1898 to 1910.

About 10 years ago, Mike Chase was on the verge of following suit and joining the ranks of the local police department when he learned that a blood thinner he was taking to reduce clots made him ineligible.

“‘Since you are on Coumadin, you can’t be a cop in the United States,’” the doctor told him, Chase said. “‘I don’t know how we missed this in your paperwork, prior …but there is no state that’s going to take you.’ So, that kind of stopped the tracks right there.”

He went back to work for an area school for children with special needs and coached high school boys soccer — pretty much setting aside his dream.

That was until he wound up at the finish line during the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013. He and another Danvers resident, Dan Marshall, jumped in to help the injured. Chase went to the aid of then 6-year-old Jane Richard, who lost her leg in the attack; her 8-year-old brother was killed.

That horrific day rekindled Chase’s desire to become a police officer. He sought different medical opinions, and decided to go off the medication. Eventually, he quit his job and attended the state’s Reading Regional Police Academy with classmates who were, in some cases, 15 years younger. And in August, he fulfilled his dream.

Chase started patrolling not long after he was sworn in by the town clerk on Aug. 19.

“He just never gave up,” his father said, “which made me doubly proud.”

Dream derailed

Chase graduated from high school in 1997 and attended East Carolina University for two years, where he played Division 1 men’s soccer. He tore his ACL — anterior cruciate ligament — three times on his left knee and once on his right. After the third surgery, he developed blood clots in his lungs and was put on Coumadin, an anticoagulant.

After six months, he went off the medication, but developed a second clot in his calf. Doctors told him he would be on the blood thinner for the rest of his life.

He didn’t know then that it would prevent him from becoming a police officer.

“I was at my final medical walk-through, and that’s when we found out that the medicine I was on was going to keep me from being a cop,” Chase said. 

So Chase returned to his job, then as a student support coordinator, and again became a successful high school soccer coach.

Then, he wound up on the patio of a restaurant on April 15, 2013, with his wife, Dena, and a group of friends. They were close to where the second of two bombs went off at the Boston Marathon finish line.

Chase and Dan Marshall ran to help. Chase and off-duty Lynn firefighter Matt Patterson fashioned a tourniquet out of Chase’s belt, and carried Jane Richard to an ambulance. Then they helped clear barricades and pass body boards back to wounded people in the crowd. Chase suffered a concussion and a ruptured eardrum, but escaped more serious injury.

He knew then, he said, that this kind of work was still what he wanted to do with his life. “It’s something … I have wanted to do since I was 5.”

Chase spoke with his doctor and met with a cardiologist in nearby Salem, Massachusetts, who had a different theory than his doctors in Boston. He got a couple more opinions, and eventually got off the medication about two years ago.

“I have no problems whatsoever,” Chase said. “I feel great.” 

A better fit

Chase said coming at the job at age 37, with a lot of life experience, makes him better equipped than he would have been in his 20s. And so far he’s thrilled.

“It’s great,” Chase said. “It’s everything I think it would be, you know, and I got a couple of great guys showing me the ropes here.” 

Chase said he knows he has become a police officer “at an interesting time in policing in the world and everything that is going on, but the community in Danvers is fantastic. I’m fortunate to be working in the town that I live in, and grew up in, and (I’m) just looking to give back.”

His father is the one who got to pin his badge on at the police academy graduation.

“It doesn’t get better than that,” Stu Chase said.

Forman writes for the Salem, Massachusetts News.