Slain cop Michael Hoosock remembered as mentor and hero: ‘That man saved my husband’s life’

Syracuse, N.Y. – It’s hard to say how many lives Onondaga County Sheriff’s Lt. Michael Hoosock saved before he was gunned down while on duty Sunday.

Sharon Bleck, of Dryden, is especially grateful for one of them: her husband’s.

In 2008, a year after Hoosock joined the sheriff’s office, Ewald “Rick” Bleck was driving through Salina when his pickup collided with a Coca-Cola delivery truck, according to sheriff’s records. Bleck suffered a 7-inch gash across his jugular vein and was bleeding profusely.

When Hoosock arrived at the scene, he jumped out of his vehicle without a coat and applied pressure to Bleck’s neck to stanch the bleeding until Bleck could be transported to the hospital. At one point, Bleck regained consciousness and urged Hoosock to go get his coat because of the freezing rain, Sharon Bleck said. Hoosock refused.

“That man saved my husband’s life,’’ she sobbed when reached by phone Thursday.

After two surgeries, Rick Bleck recovered fully. He turned 73 this year. He said he hopes the story of his rescue is a comfort to the Hoosock family.

Hoosock, known as “Hootch” to many, was one of two police officers ambushed and shot to death Sunday by a gunman armed with a semi-automatic assault rifle. Syracuse Police Officer Michael Jensen also died in the incident.

Hoosock was a cop, a firefighter and a paramedic. Sometimes all three at once. In 2013, he was awarded a medal of valor by then-Sheriff Kevin Walsh for running into a burning apartment building in the town of Onondaga – before firefighters arrived – and evacuating multiple residents, most of whom had been asleep.

He was born to serve, friends say. As a middle-schooler, he single-handedly recovered a friend’s stolen bike from older teens. He would drop everything – including high-school baseball practice – to answer a fire alarm as a teenage firefighter.

As Hoosock grew older and gained responsibility as a cop and firefighter, he was a mentor encouraging newer members to pursue public service as a career. And he was a friend you could call at 3 a.m. if your car broke down.

“He was genuinely one of the most kind people you could have met,’’ said close friend Chris Goonan, a fellow firefighter. “He helped everybody who asked for it. He helped anybody that he thought needed help who didn’t ask for it. He was always, always there for you.’’

Sure, he might run your underpants up the firehouse flagpole when you weren’t looking. That, too, was Hootch.

‘Out of the ordinary’

A search of Hoosock’s personnel file shows at least seven incidents for which he received official commendations. Just three months ago, the chief of the North Syracuse Volunteer Fire Department credited Hoosock with saving the life of an unconscious man, using CPR and automated external defibrillators (AED).

“The actions of Lt. Hoosock, which he likely would not believe to be out of the ordinary, were truly that,’’ Chief Richard Allen wrote to Sheriff Toby Shelley.

Twice Hoosock was recognized for his response to calls regarding armed men at the Regional Transportation Center in Syracuse.

In 2020, he fired his weapon at a man who was brandishing a gun and shot two people – a security guard and a bystander – inside the bus terminal. The gunman was not wounded but surrendered after Hoosock shot at him. The deputy was awarded a medal of valor.

An earlier incident was harder for Hoosock to deal with emotionally, his friend Goonan said.

In 2012, Hoosock and other officers were called to the Regional Transportation Center to deal with an apparently armed man in the parking lot. The man drew what appeared to be a .357 Magnum handgun – but turned out to be a pellet gun -- and was shot dead by the officers. Hoosock and another deputy were named New York State Deputy of the Year in recognition.

“He really struggled with that, that he was getting an award for taking somebody’s life,’’ said Goonan, a state conservation officer who previously fought fires together with Hoosock at Moyers Corners Fire Department and worked with him at Rural Metro ambulance service.

“The life-saving awards are the awards he was most proud of,’’ he said.

‘Hootch! … Hootch! … Hootch!’

Hoosock grew up in the tightknit community of Lyncourt, just beyond the northern border of Syracuse, a neighborhood anchored by the Lyncourt Volunteer Fire Department and St. Daniel Church. Hoosock attended St. Daniel School and was an altar server at church.

During the summers, boys from the neighborhood spent days playing baseball or wiffleball at fields next to the former Syracuse China factory on Court Street, recalled Dan Ryan, who lived four doors down from the Hoosocks and now works in Utica. During one game when the boys were 11 or 12, they noticed two or three older teenagers hanging around the field. Then they noticed the teens stealing one of their bikes.

“Without hesitation and before any of us had any clue what to do, Mike grabbed my bike and chased down these kids and retrieved the stolen bike single-handedly,’’ Ryan said. “When he came down the hill with the bike, we cheered for him as if it was a movie. ‘Hootch! … Hootch! ... Hootch!’ "

Hoosock went on to play baseball at Bishop Grimes High School. He pitched and played outfield. At first, he didn’t wow anybody.

“He wasn’t the most gifted athlete,’’ recalled his coach, Mark Kelley, who now coaches at Central Square. “He wasn’t the fastest, or the biggest, or the strongest, didn’t have the best arm.”

But he did have a powerful work ethic. Kelley often admonished the team to be “more like Hootch,’’ recalled former teammate David Haas.

Hoosock spent hours and hours in the batting cages in the basement of the school, sometimes to the exasperation of his coach.

“There were times when I said, ‘Mike, I gotta go,’ " Kelley said.

The work paid off in Hoosock’s senior year, when he excelled on the mound and at bat. He was named first-team all-league.

“It came out of nowhere,’’ Kelley said. “It was exciting to watch as a coach.”

Hoosock was equally devoted to mischievous humor.

‘How’s your neck?’

The athletic director at Bishop Grimes back then was Mike Barlow, a former pitcher who played seven years in the Major Leagues. One day Barlow delivered a pre-season pep talk to the assembled baseball and softball teams, recalled former softball coach George Lowe. After Barlow finished lecturing on good sportsmanship, camaraderie and the like, Hoosock piped up with a question, Lowe recalled.

“How’s your neck?” he asked Barlow.

Barlow was puzzled. What do you mean, he asked Hoosock. As Lowe tells it, Hoosock responded:

“All those times when you were on the mound and you had to spin around to look at where the ball went over the fence, I was just wondering if your neck was OK.’’

Hoosock never lost his love of jokes and pranks, friends say. Raising a fellow firefighter’s boxer shorts up the flagpole was among his lesser efforts, Goonan recalled.

Hoosock’s masterpiece came during a snowy winter sometime around 2010, according to Goonan and Moyers Corners Chief Michael Brown.

For two or three weeks after Christmas, Hoosock drove around in his beat-up pickup truck collecting discarded Christmas trees and storing them in the two-car garage of the house he was renting. He amassed 30 or more.

Then late one night after a big snowfall, Hoosock and several friends with pickups planted all the trees in the snow in the front yard of Brown, who was a captain at the time. Brown noticed nothing until 3 a.m., when the fire alarm went off and he responded to a fire.

Brown said he refused to acknowledge the prank, denying that there was anything unusual at his house when the others asked. When he got home after 4 a.m., he dragged all the trees to his back yard. Eventually, they all laughed about it, Brown said.

Hoosock dubbed the effort “Operation Enduring Treedom.”

‘Boots on the ground’

Hoosock’s firefighting career began when he joined the Lyncourt fire department as a junior firefighter. At age 16, junior firefighters can assist at fire calls as long as they stay clear of the “life hazard” area. At 18, they can become full firefighters.

Haas, a high school baseball teammate of Hoosock, recalls a day when Hoosock abruptly left practice to respond to a fire alarm. At the time, Bishop Grimes did not have its own fields and the team was practicing on the Lyncourt field.

“He just left the practice to go see what was going on, and to go help,’’ Haas said. “At this point, he was just a high school student, but he was just so dedicated to the community.”

In 2007, after moving to Clay, Hoosock joined the Moyers Corners Fire Department. He would rise to the rank of deputy chief in 2018, before scaling back his commitment to spend more time with his growing family.

Alton Apples, who is now a firefighter and sheriff’s jail deputy, said Hoosock guided him beginning when Apples joined the fire department as a teenager.

“He pretty much watched me grow up,’’ Apples said. “I started when I was 18. Now I turned 32 this year. You know, he kind of guided me into the position I am in today.’’

Hoosock mentored Apples as he followed a similar career path to his own. Apples went to work for Rural Metro and earned certification as an emergency medical technician. Later, with Hoosock’s encouragement, Apples took the civil service exam to become a deputy.

“He always encouraged and always helped and mentored me,’’ Apples said. “I mean, he was just always there to help.’’

Hoosock was always a person you could call for help. Once, when Apples’ car broke down at 3 a.m., he woke up Hootch to come take him home.

Christopher Myers, who also works as a custody deputy, said he was not surprised that Hoosock was the first to respond Sunday when Syracuse police put out a call for assistance at what turned out to be the gunman’s residence in Salina.

“He was a boots-on-the-ground kind of leader,’’ Myers said. “He wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty, and, you know, do whatever needed to be done. He wasn’t a sit-back-and-watch kind of guy.”

A young family

Hoosock met his future wife, Caitlin, in 2011 when they helped paint the house of a mutual friend. Caitlin declined to be interviewed this week, but relayed through her father that she remembers the exact date: May 6.

They had a lot in common. Both worked for Rural Metro as paramedics -- she full-time, he part-time. Coincidentally, Caitlin’s father, Norm Carroll, is a fire instructor who taught Hoosock as a teenager in a class he taught at the Lyncourt fire department.

Hoosock bought a house in Liverpool in 2010 and lived there with several roommates, other firefighters and EMTs. At some point, Caitlin joined the household and then became more than a roommate. Gradually the others moved out.

“Next thing you know, it’s just the two of them in the house,’’ Carroll said. “And, ‘Oh, by the way, we’re getting married.’ "

They married in 2017.

Caitlin now works as a nurse practitioner at the VA Medical Center and for the Upstate New York Poison Center. She is among those who called Hoosock Mike, not Hootch.

Hoosock was devoted to his three kids, friends say. In 2019, he and Caitlin bought a house in Clay with a dock on the Oneida River, where Hoosock had fun fishing with the kids.

“He was always, always doing stuff with his kids when he wasn’t working,” Myers said.

The Hoosock children are 3, 5 and 7 years old.

Hoosock’s family is still overwhelmed by grief, Carroll said. But they also have been heartened by the memories, both of Hoosock’s heroism and his hijinks.

The lives saved. The dead Christmas trees planted. Everything that made him Mike, or Hootch.

“The one thing that we have is all those memories,” Carroll said. “You know, there’s a lot of hurt, there’s a lot of emptiness. But we fill it with the ability to know that we’ve had all these other experiences.’’

Staff writer Tim Knauss can be reached at: email | Twitter | 315-470-3023.