Plenty of cops get a new job after retirement. Police experience lends itself to working security gigs.
Scott Laughton wasn’t interested in security.
Heading into the end of his 25-year career with the Park Ridge police department in Bergen County, he was studying hard to get his nursing degree from Bergen Community College.
Between taking classes and clinicals, studying and holding down his police job, he was “working around the clock” to get that degree, he said Sunday.
“It [nursing] was something I could do anywhere in the world,” he said. He wanted to continue helping people, his favorite part of working as a police officer. He figured he could lend aid in a disaster zone when one struck, like Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, or in Haiti after the devastating 2010 earthquake.
“Who knew that three months into my first job I’d be doing disaster relief?” he said.
Laughton works as a nurse in the observation unit at Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck, one of the areas hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic. A doctor compared it to a “war zone” last week.
The hospital is beginning clinical drug trials to fight the virus, which has more than 13,000 confirmed cases statewide. Bergen County had more than 2,000 confirmed cases of the virus according to the latest state numbers.
Observation units are normally a “halfway point” between the emergency room and admission to the hospital. But in the past two weeks, the floor has become a coronavirus treatment unit.
“We were doing every kind of nursing except for infectious diseases. Now it’s all infectious diseases,” he said.
Like a hospital in South Jersey, Holy Name is using baby monitors to sometimes check on patients remotely and limit use of personal protective equipment (PPE), which hospitals nationwide are burning through.
As a sign of appreciation, his boss, Nurse Manager Lisa Cifalino, posted about him on Facebook. She included a photo of Laughton with his trusty Crocs – provided after a donation – to wear at work because they’re easy to clean, and so he can change into his own shoes before going home to his family.
The Park Ridge police later shared that post and photo to their page. Laughton said people have been coming out of the woodwork to message him and wish him well.
“In the hard times, people really start to come together,” he said.
But the Desert Storm veteran shied from the attention somewhat. He mentioned Cifalino has posted several other “heroes of the day” on her page since then – she’s now up to six, shouting out an oncology nurse, patient care technicians and others working on that floor.
He praised them right back, saying: “They put their fear aside and go get their work done.”
“I’m no different than anybody else,” Laughton said. “I’m just a new nurse trying to figure out what I’m doing.”
He sees some similarities between his former role as a police officer and his current as a nurse on the front lines against the coronavirus.
“Being able to be a calm head in a chaotic environment,” is one similarity.
More than 20 years ago, Hurricane Floyd brought the state to a halt, producing record flooding in some spots. It totaled the Park Ridge library and municipal building. The entire police headquarters was lost.
After the restructuring of the hospital unit, and some things being in different places, “it was like the same thing, doing it over again,” he said.
After speaking with NJ Advance Media, Laughton – not the Philadelphia Flyers player! – had just gotten home and was eager to wash up, decompress and rest after six shifts in a row.
“I’m just me and doing my job,” he said. “Don’t thank me. … There’s not a cop, EMT I’ve known all my life who wouldn’t do the same thing.”