From serving in the military to serving the school, keeping people safe is Student Resource Officer Tiffany Blase’s top priority. The school’s SRO works with students at the campus every day. Whether it’s solving problems or helping out at events, she’s there to answer the call.

This is Blase’s first year here at Rouse as the SRO, before, she was at Vandegrift. She’s been a police officer for almost three years and previously served in the military for 10 years.

“A spot became open because Officer Girdler left,” Blase said. “I was asked if I could come here and I said ‘Absolutely.’”

Every morning Blase has to go down to the police station to talk about what happened the night before and to find out if any students were involved in anything they have dealt with the day before.

“Every day is different,” Blase said. “Which is why I love my job because it’s different every day. It’s never the same thing.”

As a police officer, she mainly dealt with adults while working on the streets. Now as a school SRO, the majority of the problems she works with involve juveniles

“Being here at the school is the hardest part of my job,” Blase said. “Just seeing young people making wrong decisions that are going to affect their lives. Most the students don’t understand that, and I was there too, being young I thought ‘Psssh whatever, it doesn’t matter.’ It does however, it affects the rest of your life.”

Blase would like students to realize how the use of social media could affect the rest of their lives as well. She understands social media has had an impact on many students’ lives, however, careless posts could be the reason someone would not be accepted into college or hired for a certain job.

“We didn’t have social media around when I was growing up,” Blase said. “Anything that’s on there, colleges and those employers are looking at your social media, so you just got to be on top of what’s going on.”

Remembering how stubborn kids can be, Blase learned new techniques on how to talk to and help kids stay out of trouble; she evens uses them with her 11-year old son.

“I think it’s always best to hear it from someone else other than your own parent,” Blase said. “When you hear it from a parent you’re like ‘Whatever mom,’ or ‘Whatever, dad.’ So I always try to give him some outlets for other people to talk to him about what’s going on.”

At a young age, Blase knew she wanted to become a police officer. However, she took a different turn and joined the military for 10 years. Although, her husband became a police officer before her, causing conflict after her time serving were over.

“I didn’t want my son to have two police officers to deal with,” Blase said. “Then as he got older and was going to school, I thought, you know, he’s getting older and soon he’s going to leave me, so I should do something I want to do. So at an older age, I went to the police academy and became a police officer.”

No matter what happens on campus, Blase is nearby to keep things under control.

“This is my city,” Blase said. “Rouse High School is my city and I will always patrol my city so that it is safe.”