Badly burned police officer retrains to become a lawyer
Badly burned police officer retrains to become a lawyer
Associate Editor
When the call crackled over his radio, Jim O’Hara, a detective in the burglary division of the Plantation Police Department, happened to be in the neighborhood. A man had taken three young girls hostage and threatened to blow them up.
When O’Hara arrived at the scene, one of the girls ran out of the burning house screaming the man was going to kill them. O’Hara and another officer rushed inside and were trapped during an explosion and fire. The suspect and two of the girls died in the fire. The other officer was burned on more than 20 percent of his body. And O’Hara was nearly burned to death, suffering burns on nearly 80 percent of his body.
For six months, O’Hara was hospitalized in Jackson’s Trauma Unit, clinging to his life. Another three months was spent in rehab, trying to repair both physical and emotional injuries. Over the next three years, 25 operations patched him back together. More than once, doctors did not believe O’Hara would survive, but he proved them wrong.
“The most devastating part of my injury,” he said, was knowing he could not return to the law-enforcement job he loved. His hands were burned so badly he could not shoot a gun again.
“My life had changed 180 degrees,” O’Hara, 41, said of the tragic injuries he sustained in July 1995. “You have to make a decision whether to go backward or move in a positive way.”
His children — a 2-year-old daughter and a son born just a week after he was burned — gave him “the desire to be around for my kids and to help raise them.”
The positive turn O’Hara’s life took was getting his law degree from Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad Law Center, graduating cum laude in December 2002.
Recently, he began his new job as a personal injury attorney with the Ft. Lauderdale firm of Haliczer Pettis.
“As a police officer, I wanted to help people. In particular, those who could not help themselves. As a personal injury attorney, I have another opportunity to help people, and to fight for what has been taken from them,” O’Hara said.
On this October day, he had only been on the job three weeks and had no real experience with clients, yet.
But, it felt great to be working again.
“I am very excited and thrilled to be here. I look forward to the first opportunity to represent somebody who has been severely injured. To be able to step in their shoes and represent them will be a wonderful experience,” he said.
Eight years later, people still stop him in public and ask, “Aren’t you that policeman? Aren’t you that fireman?”
His well-publicized story was known to the firm’s senior partners Eugene Pettis and Jim Haliczer, too.
When they met with O’Hara for the job interview, they recognized that the perseverance and his will to succeed that got him through his personal tragedy would be an asset working with injured clients.
“Jim has not let adversity get the best of him,” Pettis said.
The best personal injury lawyers do more than recover money for their clients, Pettis said; they help people who have been through trauma get back on their feet. Doing the job well entails compassion and empathy.
“Jim embodies it,” Pettis said. “When Jim’s experience with the law catches up with his experience with his life, he’s going to be great.”
As O’Hara embarks on his second demanding career, he said: “I don’t think they’re expecting any more of me than I’m expecting of myself.”
