It was March 30, 1981, and Tim McCarthy approached what he called a pretty normal day, assigned with the Secret Service detail guarding then-President Ronald Reagan. McCarthy, who now lives in Orland Park where he spent was police chief from 1994 to 2022, retold his story in a recent Secret Service interview of the few seconds that left himself, the president and others wounded in an assassination attempt. The interview is posted at secretservice.gov and at the Secret Service’s YouTube channel. It was conducted with McCarthy at the Secret Service’s Chicago field office by Anthony Guglielmi, chief of communications for the agency. A spokesman for the Secret Service said the posting of the interview was not an effort to burnish the agency’s image in light of increased scrutiny since an attempt on Donald Trump’s life last summer as he campaigned for, and ultimately won, the presidency. It’s part of a series called “Behind the Shades” that highlights the work of Secret Service personnel and had been on a short hiatus, he said. The agency’s director stepped down after the July 13 attempt on Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania. Thomas Crooks was shot and killed after he fired at Trump during the rally, and the Secret Service, in its final assessment of the assassination attempt, cited “multiple operational and communications gaps.” “This included deficiency of established command and control, lapses in communication, and a lack of diligence by agency personnel,” the agency said in its report last fall. Secret Service agents surround former President Donald Trump after he was shot at during an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pa., July 13, 2024. (Doug Mills/The New York Times) Politics have also affected the agency. Earlier this month, Trump said he would immediately end Secret Service protection details assigned to Democrat Joe Biden’s adult children. This past January, reported sighting of immigration agents attempting to enter an elementary school on Chicago’s Southwest Side was actually Secret Service agents investigating a threat. Guglielmi told the Chicago Tribune it was their officers who were investigating a threat against a “protectee” in connection with TikTok. ‘Pretty normal day’ McCarthy, 32 at the time, had been with the Secret Service for nine years when John Hinckley Jr. opened fire as Reagan left a Washington hotel. The president had addressed the Building and Construction Workers Union of the AFL-CIO, speaking at a union convention at the Washington Hilton. “It started out as a pretty normal day,” McCarthy, 75, said in the interview. Reagan’s speech was well-received, McCarthy said, and walking out of the hotel at about 2:30 p.m., “I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.” McCarthy said standard protocols were being followed, including having the passenger side rear door of the president’s limousine open. In a previous interview with the Daily Southtown, McCarthy said he and other agents were not notified the president would briefly walk a “rope line” that separates the president and protectors from the crowd. Former Orland Park police Chief Tim McCarthy tears up Oct. 23, 2023, when the village’s police station was dedicated in his honor. (John Smierciak/ Daily Southtown) Outside the hotel, McCarthy said in the Secret Service interview, “everyone’s yelling ‘Mr. President,’ and, of course, you’re on pins and needles.” “Is the president going to go to the crowd or not?” McCarthy said in the recent interview. Gunfire erupts He said Hinckley, armed with a .22-caliber pistol, was to his left, then pushed forward through the crowd and “reeled off six rounds in about 1.6 seconds.” Jim Brady, the president’s press secretary, was the first to be hit by gunfire, and then Washington police Officer Thomas Delahanty. McCarthy was hit in the right chest by the third bullet after putting himself between the shooter and the president, and a fifth bullet ricocheted off the limousine and hit Reagan under the arm, moments after Secret Service agent Jerry Parr pulled the president inside the vehicle. Parr, who died in 2015 of congestive heart failure at 85, in a previous interview suggested that if not for McCarthy stopping the path of that third round from Hinckley’s gun, Reagan’s wounds could have been much more serious. “If (Tim’s) not there, I’m sure that either I or the president would have been hit that day,” he said. “The only thing between the president and this guy was McCarthy’s big Irish body.” McCarthy was on the ground after being struck and the limousine carrying the president sped away. Reagan was hit by gunfire, but the wound wasn’t noticed until he began to cough up blood, and was rushed to George Washington University Hospital, according to the Reagan Presidential Library & Museum. McCarthy was also taken to the same hospital. Training rather than bravery In several interviews over the years, McCarthy has downplayed the notion that bravery had much to do with his actions. He credits the training he received as an agent, drilled into him through repetition and simulations of responding to a threat or attack. “What I did that day was solely based on training,” McCarthy, now 75, said in the Secret Service interview. McCarthy said he returned to the presidential protective detail three months after he was wounded. “It was slightly uncomfortable to start with,” he said. He worked eight years with the Secret Service’s Presidential Protective Division, and in addition to Reagan was also part of the protective details for presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush. McCarthy spent 14 years as a criminal investigator with the Secret Service. In the interview with Guglielmi, McCarthy said he never regretted joining the Secret Service, but joked that he had wished he’d taken off that particular March 30. “The Secret Service gave me an awful lot, no two ways about it,” McCarthy said in the interview. McCarthy retired from the Secret Service in October 1993 as the special agent in charge of the Chicago field office, and was named Orland Park’s chief the following May. During his time heading the Orland Park department, McCarthy worked to establish and lead the South Suburban Major Crimes Task Force, which assists area departments with homicide investigations, and was also Orland Park’s acting village manager for a time. In 2016, he was the recipient of the first Chief of Police of the Year award from the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police. Or Retired, then not Although McCarthy retired Aug. 1, 2020, as Orland Park’s chief, that was not the end to his career in law enforcement. In 2024, the Orland Park police station was named in his honor. In November 2020 he was brought on as interim police chief in Mokena, and stayed until a replacement was brought on in May 2021. McCarthy is president of Sentinel Security in Palos Heights, which provides armed an unarmed security guards and security consulting services. McCarthy said he kept in touch with the president and Nancy Reagan, exchanging occasional phone calls, cards and letters. McCarthy said he and his wife twice visited Nancy Reagan in California as the president’s health deteriorated, and they both attended the funerals of the president and Nancy Reagan. Hinckley was 25 at the time he shot Reagan, but was acquittted of any charges by reason of insanity. He lived under the supervision of mental health facilities for 35 years, then was granted unconditional release from court supervision in June 2022. ...read more read less