NYPD grad survived cancer, found religion and joins New York’s Finest: ‘You get hit with a reality check’
Kareem Khalil’s cancer diagnosis as a teenager hurled him into a soul-searching journey that led him to embrace his Muslim religion — and landed him in the ranks of New York’s Finest.
Khalil, 23, was one of 620 recruits who were sworn into the NYPD at Madison Square Garden on Monday, the culmination of a quest that was almost cut short when he was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma as a 16-year-old happy-go-luck kid from the Bronx.
“It happened out of the blue,” he told The Post. “It was definitely a fearful feeling, because being 16 at the time you don’t really know what’s going on in life as much. Like, you are just thinking about going out with your friends, having fun.
“And you get hit with a reality check,” Khalil said. “Like I may not see next year with my family.”
The son of Palestinian parents, the ordeal sent Khalil into six months of chemotherapy and derailed his youth in Kingsbridge, forcing him to be home-schooled while his parents prayed for his survival.
It awakened his faith and led him to embrace his religion.
“I had to reassess myself of where I stand religiously, because I thought I wasn’t going to make it out alive throughout the chemotherapy,” he said. “I had stage 4 Hodgkins and it was a lot to deal with mentally. It had me soul searching early on. At 16-years old you don’t really think about that stuff.”
With his newfound faith, Khalil survived cancer but found the working world wasn’t going to work for him — he tried construction but found the job wasn’t accommodating his Muslim practies.
Armed with a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, he took a job as a security guard and with Amazon — and set his sights on the NYPD.
“I never would have thought I would be a police officer during that time,” Khalil said of his months of cancer treatment. “It came through a long, right place, right time. I did have an interest in criminal justice after high school. I went to John Jay and got my bachelor’s.”
At the NYPD, he found his faith was not only accommodated but embraced.
“I even get to pray in the academy,” he added. “We have Sunday prayer inside the academy with all my other Muslim officers. It’s especially for Ramadan. They help out with that a lot too, when we needed to break fast they allowed us to be excused, break our fast and go back to academics and training.”
Monday’s graduating class is one of the department’s most diverse — 152 of the newly anointed cops were born in 33 foreign countries, and is a racial and ethnic melting pot.
Police said the class is 37% Hispanic, 25% white, 20% black and 15% Asian.
“It’s kind of a surreal thing,” he said Monday. “I don’t believe that I’m actually here but at the same time, through the grace of God and will power, I’m very happy to be here and for my family to witness this.
“[The cancer] was the biggest turning point of my life, the reason why I am the way I am today and the way I treat other people,” he added. “Life is a precious blessing and it shouldn’t be taken for granted.”
