By William Curvan and Eshaan Joshi
Shortly after the last residence halls shut their doors for winter break, third-year Dietrich student and undergraduate Senate president Kyle Hynes forwarded an email to his friend and Kiltie Band president Jack Hall, a third-year chemistry major. The original email was from Ray Mialki, a security officer for the Carnegie Mellon Police Department. Mialki had asked Hynes if he could get the Kiltie Band to accompany him on his final shift before retirement. In forwarding this communication to the head of Kiltie, Hynes wrote, “this man is the most incredible security guard ever. If you make this happen, mister president, I will be eternally grateful.”
Anyone whose sleep schedule has been ravaged by the workload at Carnegie Mellon knows that the CUC has a lockup process that begins around midnight. Most of the electronic doors close automatically, but manually locking the revolving doors is a critical step of the process.
On Thursday, Feb. 8, the keys were handed to Mialki for one last lockup.
After 42-and-a-half years working several different jobs for the university — plus four years of undergrad here — Mialki was retiring. It’s difficult to capture the man in writing. You may have seen him patrolling campus as a member of Carnegie Mellon’s Security force. Colleagues described him as kind, humorous, with a dozen stories ready to tell at a moment’s notice from a life well-lived. He’s one of the oldest members of the staff, and he said he’s seen most of the modern campus built brick by brick.
Mialki showed up at Carnegie Mellon in ’77 as a chemical engineering first-year. He was a first-generation college student, attending at a time when college just wasn’t that common. He said tuition was around $3,400, there were parking lots in places we’d consider essential parts of campus, a distinct lack of Tepper, and a Pitt frat where the Alumni House now sits.
Mialki didn’t much like chemical engineering. By his sophomore year, he had switched to civil engineering and worked part-time as a shuttle driver. He covered dispatch shifts during the busiest days of the week, often because full-time workers wanted time off on the weekends.
Mialki found that he liked police work more than engineering. He was enjoying it so much that, after graduating with his degree in ’81, he started working full-time for the university in July. And just like that, he spent four decades on campus.
Mialki moved across roles in the police department, reaching the role of detective. He said he was reaching a 55 to 75 percent clearance rate handling casework, when the industry standard hovered around 15 percent. In his first few years on the job, he cracked an on-campus electronics equipment theft ring, recovering projects, computer equipment, and the like worth $60,000 in 1980s dollars. He moved around before finally settling back as a security officer as he prepared to retire. “A 40 percent cut in wages, 90 percent cut in bullshit, 10 points lower blood pressure,” he chuckled.
On Thursday evening, a crowd stood outside the CUC in Merson courtyard, eagerly awaiting the musical escort. While the original plan had been to follow Mialki as he locked the many doors of the UC, protocol had changed so that Mialki’s only job was to lock the revolving doors that open onto Merson.
Jack Hall was anxious that the procession might not work out. It was easy enough to find sheet music for the brass and wind- heavy “When I’m Sixty-Four” by The Beatles, but “I Don’t Care Anymore” may never have been arranged for a marching band. That was, until multi-instrumentalist veteran of the Kiltie band and civil engineering fourth-year Justin Peng arranged one specifically for the send-off.
At 11:40 p.m., news came to the students and colleagues waiting to see Mialki off: the Kilties were coming. Hynes organized the send- off for Mialki, whom he’d met over the summer during his tenure as a pre-college RA. In a statement to The Tartan, Hynes wrote that they “spent lots of nights just talking. He told me old stories from when he was a young cop, shared words of wisdom, and emanated a youthful energy that seemed beyond his sixty-two years. Ever since, I’ve seen him around campus — at the desk in Mellon, in the UC, or traipsing up the Cut — and he’s always good for a wave and, if we have time, a conversation. He’s the kind of guy who, once you get to know him, sticks with you.”
Kiltie Band recruited 11 of its members for a secret mission. This elite group of horn-blowers and reed-tonguers walked from the Donner ditch to Merson Courtyard. As they passed the tennis courts, they began the marching music. At the courtyard, they halted their music to allow Carnegie Mellon police lieutenant John Wester to speak a few words on Mialki’s career.
Then, the Kiltie members played for him as he locked it all up one last time. They played for him as he walked out, music blaring through the UC in a parade following Mialki. The melodies of “When I’m Sixty Four” echoed as we stepped out of the UC into the biting cold, Mialki’s colleagues and friends surrounding him. “He was walking like he was king of the friggin’ world,” Hall said.
As the band’s rendition of the Carnegie fight song rang through the night air, Mialki got into his squad car and floored it off into the night.
Mialki will still be around, taking a few classes here in his spare time. If you see him, say hi, or maybe listen to a story or two. He’s seen all the campus emergency services respond to a “Building Collapse on Forbes and Morewood” alert, thinking Warner Hall had come down when really there was a small Booth mishap. He’s had to break it to a few sheepish first-years that David Tepper doesn’t have a suite up at the top of his titular building, and he’s busted a hip chasing car thieves. He’s got stories about Christian death metal bands in Norway, a tourism pitch good enough to make you reconsider yoursummerplans,andmorethan that, he has a smile and a laugh inviting you to hear more.
In closing, he told us what you’d expect from someone who has spent four decades watching us bumble around this university: “Stay safe.”
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