Carol Goldblatt, B.S.N. ’83, was destined to be in a helping profession, but the trick was finding out which one. Following the advice of her father and the encouragement of her professors, she didn’t stop at her nursing degree, but went on to earn doctorates in law and clinical psychology and a master’s in public health administration and planning. “I was really searching for something to put this all together,” she says. She ultimately found a way to integrate her academic background as the first postdoctoral police psychology fellow at the Honolulu Police Department in Oahu, Hawaii. She is now a permanent employee with the title of police psychologist II.

Working closely with the administration and police personnel, Goldblatt provides psychological services not only to people in the department but to their immediate family members as well. She performs pre-employment psychological evaluations for metropolitan police recruits and police radio dispatchers, trains them in stress management, and teaches at the police academy to instruct officers on appropriate ways to encounter people with mental illness. It’s a job she carries with her 24/7; should the officers encounter someone in the community who appears to be dangerous to themselves or to others, they call her to assist them. Goldblatt also is part of the department’s Hostage Negotiation Team.

“It’s a unique field,” Goldblatt says. “Police psychology is still in the early phases of distinguishing itself from other fields of psychology in terms of its proficiencies in the body of knowledge and its parameters of practice.”

The Honolulu Police Department’s Postdoctoral Fellowship in Police Psychology is the only two-year fellowship of its kind in the nation—a happy coincidence for Goldblatt, who moved to Hawaii in 1984 after she and her husband visited the islands on their honeymoon and fell in love with the pristine beaches and multicultural communities. It was meant to be a two-week vacation, but by the second week, they’d already found an apartment and jobs. They sent for all their belongings, which had been in storage.

“The aloha spirit isn’t just for tourists,” she says. “There’s genuine heart and respect for those around you. It’s easy to call Hawaii home.”

— Natalia Maldonado, A.B. ’06