Joe Dombroski
It’s hard to imagine someone who’s had a broader experience of NSW Police Legacy than Joe Dombroski. As a serving NSW Police Officer, he was a regular donor through payroll from almost the moment the charity formed. He later became a volunteer, helping with Christmas Lunches and the Kids’ Christmas Party. He became a Board Member of the organisation in 2002. And then he became a Legatee.
Joe joined the NSW Police in 1974, at the age of 21. Having migrated from New Zealand a few years prior, he met up with a couple of other young men who were in the force, and found himself more and more interested in what they were doing.
“Was policing in your family, then?” I ask, imagining a long line of blue dedication.
“Ah, no…,” he says, laughing. “In a town of 2,500 people I was dating the daughter of the police Sergeant.”
While it might have been romance that got him into the job, it was dedication that kept him there. He served for nearly 35 years in a long and varied career, being medically discharged in 2009 at the rank of Sergeant.
He left the metro area in 1980, heading out to the Central West region, serving in Wellington for six years, then for another six as lockup keeper in Gundagai, where his first marriage ran its course. In 1992 he moved to Goulburn, where the next chapter of his life was about to begin.
In Goulburn he met his soon-to-be-wife Sheila, and the couple moved in together, along with Sheila’s three daughters. She took a keen interest in Joe’s career, and next thing he knew, “She said was going to join the police force! I said, You’ve seen everything I’ve lived through, and you still want to join the cops?!” She did. So much so that the couple put up with her being stationed in Merrylands, living in a small rented flat, while Joe stayed in Goulburn with Sheila’s daughters, then aged 15, 12, and 9.
The literal nature of “The Police Family” came into effect here, as the girls’ grandparents lived just a block away, and were there to help when Joe couldn’t be there for them. After several months of coming up and down the highway when she was able, Sheila transferred back to Goulburn to work.
“She was a good copper,” says Joe. She really enjoyed her time in the force, making many friends who still remember her and her “Sheila-isms” fondly. When I ask Joe for an example, he laughs and tells me about the time she was acting duty officer, and a very rumpled officer walked in the door. “We supply the f***ing uniform,” she said, “At least you could f***ing iron it!”
Around 2002, Joe was working on the executive of the Police Association, when he got the call to become the PANSW rep on the Board of Police Legacy. “I was taken aback by it, honestly. I knew I donated, but I really didn’t have the nuts and bolts of what Police Legacy did.” He took some pamphlets home that night and showed them to Sheila. She took one look and said, “This is you, completely. This is you.” He called back the next day and accepted.
In 2012, Sheila had an aneurysm and died. The family were all there in the hospital when they decided to turn off the life support, a fact for which Joe remains eternally grateful. He reminds me that soon after that, Senior Constable David Rixon was shot and killed in Tamworth. “And his kids never got to say goodbye. Just think of it that way.”
And then he was a Legatee, and by then he truly knew what that meant.
“It wasn’t long after Sheila passed away… I was at a lunch, and these ladies, they’d been Legatees for a long time. And I said to them Is it usual to just cry for no reason at all? And they said, It happens all the time. That will always happen. I leant on them a bit.”
“Police Legatees get it. They get what you’re going through.”
