APCO 2022’s Distinguished Achievers Breakfast recognized APCO members and contributors on Tuesday and the Anaheim Convention Center audience heard from the first female NFL official about charting a path to success despite roadblocks. The breakfast was sponsored by Comcast.
APCO Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer Derek Poarch thanked APCO’s corporate sponsors, including platinum Corporate Partners Motorola Solutions, L3Harris Technologies, Verizon Frontline and FirstNet Built with AT&T.
Poarch introduced this year’s graduates of APCO’s Certified Public-Safety Executive Program. “The APCO Certified Public-Safety Executive Program was designed as part of APCO’s commitment to help foster member’s professional growth, and develop the leaders of tomorrow,” Poarch said.
Maya Mitchell, communications/organizational development manager for the Commission for Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA), announced agencies that have earned accreditation from the program.
She was followed by Brenda Brown and Fred Miller, representatives of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. NCMEC, in collaboration with APCO, manages the Missing Kids Readiness Program for emergency communications centers. Brown and Miller recognized new member agencies of the Missing Kids Readiness Program.
Vice President of Operations Compliance for Comcast Angel Arocho took the stage to introduce the featured speaker, Sarah Thomas, who overcame obstacles to become the NFL’s first female official. Arocha said the ability to overcome obstacles also characterizes public safety communications professionals.
“We’re not afraid to challenge the status quo. Whether it’s fighting to secure the funding we need, ensuring our centers and people have the necessary tools, caring for the health and well -being of our people, or fighting to reclassify public safety communicators, we always know how to go after it,” Arocho said.
On Thursday, Sarah Thomas officiates the Baltimore Ravens vs. Tennessee Titans pre-season game in the start of her sixth season as an NFL official. Thomas was familiar with being the “only girl” in a male-dominated sporting world long before she broke the glass ceiling in 2015 to become the first woman to officiate in the NFL and in 2020 to become the first woman to officiate the Super Bowl.
The 48-year-old from Pascagoula, Mississippi, showed a seventh-grade team photo of herself on an otherwise all-boys basketball team. She was initially denied promotion in that league because she was a girl, and, as an adult, she was thrown out of a men’s church league because, as one of the men complained, “We feel she gets some calls.”
Thomas moved into football officiating at the high school level, where she worked 10 years then moved on to midlevel college officiating. She moved to the United Football League, a minor league professional football league and, in December 2012, had her third child. It was one of the many decision points in her career that could have spelled its end. Instead, she came back and entered the pipeline for an NFL official’s job.
Her first NFL season began in 2015. A year later, on Christmas Eve 2016, she was working as a line judge in a Green Bay-Minnesota game when a receiver and defender crashed out of bounds and took her down on a pass play.
She left the field for medical attention and an x-ray showed a broken wrist that later required surgery and a metal plate. But at that moment she had something else on her mind. “I looked up and there’s four minutes in that game. I said, ‘Put this splint on me. I got to go back in this game.’”
When she came back onto the field, the play was at the opposite end. “Y’all, it was like the Chariots of Fire, running down the sidelines,” Thomas told APCO members. “I belonged out there — I knew I belonged out there.”
