Richard Jurkowski was born in 1942 in Ludlow, Massachusetts. His father was a builder and moved the family to Florida in the late `50s. Richard graduated from high school in 1960, attended college for a year and then junior college. Although he was too old for the draft, he joined the army in 1965 and attended Basic Training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina and intelligence training at Fort Holabird near Baltimore, Maryland. In Munich, Germany, he was commissioned as a warrant officer and was assigned to work with the 10^th Group at Bad Tlz. He volunteered to go to Vietnam in 1970 and was assigned to Pleiku and Detachment 613 of the 5^th Special Forces Group. After leaving Vietnam, Richard later joined the Special Forces as a reservist, commissioned as a captain and then rose to Lieutenant Colonel. As soon as Richard returned home, he enrolled in college, majored in police science and graduated Biscayne College in Miami in 1974 and earning a master's degree in police administration in 1975. He joined the police department and earned a second master's degree in law enforcement, criminology, criminal justice, and public administration. After working as the police chief in Midwest City, Oklahoma he joined the police force at Tinker Air Force Base, and then worked as a full time intelligence officer at the F-4 fighter unit there, transferred to the Air Force Special Operations, and worked part time as a deputy sheriff in Florida. After he retired in 1995, he began working as a contract specialist and after 9-11 he became an advisor for state agencies and local law enforcement, emergency management and Home Land Security, retiring in 2016.