Education
He graduated from Saint Denis Grammar School and Leo Catholic High School and then attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
police officer chief of police
He graduated from Saint Denis Grammar School and Leo Catholic High School and then attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
During the 1981, he turned into the line of fire, shielding Ronald Reagan from one of John Hinckley, Junior."s.22 caliber bullets. Surgeons at George Washington University Hospital successfully removed the round from McCarthy"s abdomen, and he fully recovered. McCarthy is one of only four Secret Service agents to have taken a bullet for the President.
McCarthy was raised in the Ashburn neighborhood of Chicago.
He graduated in 1971 with a Bachelor of Science degree in finance and joined the United States Secret Service shortly thereafter. His career included eight years assigned to the Presidential Protective Division in Washington District of Columbia and fourteen years as a criminal investigator in Chicago.
McCarthy was the Special Agent in Charge of the Secret Service Chicago Division from 1989 until his retirement in October 1993. After Hinckley began to fire, McCarthy deliberately put himself in the line of fire and spread his body in front of Reagan to make himself a target.
Although all Secret Service agents are trained to take a bullet for the President, only four have actually done southern
Besides McCarthy, officer Leslie Coffelt of the White House Police Force was killed and officers Donald Birdzell and Joseph Downs were wounded in the 1950 Truman assassination attempt. McCarthy has served as Chief of the Orland Park Police Department since May 1994, and, in 1997, he unsuccessfully ran for Illinois Secretary of State as a Democrat. In 1999, he earned a Master of Science degree in criminal/social justice from Lewis University in Romeoville, Illinois.
While there, he was a member of the football team and the Delta Tau Delta fraternity.