Our Story

Our work began out of tragedy but grew from hope, love, and empathy.

On September 30, 2015, Greg Alia, a police officer with the Forest Acres Police Department, was providing back-up on a call about a suspicious person. The suspect ran and Greg was the first officer to catch up with him on the scene. The man had a gun, turned toward Greg and used it. His bullet hit Greg. Greg was pronounced dead at the scene just before 8 a.m. His life was just getting started. His career, his marriage, his life as a young father. All ended that Wednesday morning.

Even though her world was completely torn apart, his wife Kassy, responded to Greg’s death by taking action.

It started with speaking to the media outlets. “I spoke to anyone who asked about Greg,” she shared. “I did it for Greg, to honor his memory; I did it for Sal, our son who turned 6 months old the day Greg was killed; but more than anything I did it to challenge a divisive narrative. Far too often, we forget that there are real people behind the stories we hear in the news. By talking about Greg, by telling his story, I hoped to humanize the loss and provide a space for connection to grow.”

Her initial response and desire to create a connection based on our shared humanity was the spark that mobilized our movement to build bridges of trust, understanding, and hope through empathy and action.

What began as a gut response to a tragic loss grew into a deeper desire to facilitate change. Through her own process of finding peace with the loss of her husband coupled with her training in clinical-community psychology, she began to see a pathway to offer healing as a solution. The opportunity to bring people together was further solidified when she found forgiveness for the man who killed her husband.

“I imagined how I would feel if I were the mother of the man who killed Greg, and immediately I saw him just like my own little boy, so filled with hope and possibility,” Kassy shared. “It was then and there that I saw how much we all had lost, his family and ours. I saw that neither of us wanted to be in that tragic place. I wondered, what if we had found the man who killed Greg before that tragic day? Would we have found a man in need? And what if we could have helped him?”

It was from that recognition that the mission and vision for Serve & Connect were born.

We believe that at the end of the day, what police and community want is more the same than it is different: for our communities to be safe, our families to be protected and our children to thrive. We believe that police and community partners have all the right tools to achieve these shared outcomes and that they can build stronger, safer communities when they work together.

It is by working together that we disrupt cycles of heartbreak and pain, and in doing so, lead the way for healing and hope to flourish.