Charm City Cop

The men and women who've saved Baltimore from a complete meltdown for the past several decades are the city's police and fire department members-blue collar employees who consistently put the city's welfare ahead of their own.

Steve Tabeling is one of them, but no one would have ever predicted he'd become a decorated police officer.

At age fourteen, he left school-he hoped foreverand became a hardworking apprentice for his father, tearing out the insides of coal-burning home furnaces. He also met Dolores, who everyone called "Honey." They married a few years later.

Two years after the wedding, their first baby arrived, and Tabeling ironically became a police officer. He had the good fortune to be paired with a man who had something to prove and who didn't give up easily.

But police work did not come without problems: Shortly into the job, Tabeling shot and killed an armed robber, and he found himself not just fighting for his job-but for his freedom.

Tabeling's journey from a troubled youth to a family man and police officer who rose up the ranks to make a tremendous difference shows that anyone can achieve success.