Aguiar takes leadership lessons from NYPD, 9/11 into Riverhead supervisor job

On a bright, beautiful September day nearly 20 years ago, Yvette Aguiar faced an emergency situation that still haunts her. The then-NYPD officer was across the street when the World Trade Center was struck.

When the first plane hit, striking the north tower at 8:46 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, Aguiar was at an election event for her son’s godfather — then-Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, who was running for mayor of New York City. After the impact, she headed to the south tower and helped other emergency personnel evacuate the building, which was hit at 9:03 a.m.

Aguiar would remain at Ground Zero for weeks after the deadly terror attacks, working in several areas, including in the morgue helping sort pieces of identification belonging to the victims.

“There’s guilt, the fact that you survived while people were dying all around you. There’s a complexity of emotions,” said Aguiar, who noted that 9/11 is still “close to my heart,” even though she doesn't like to talk about it much.

These days, Aguiar is speaking to constituents and officials in Riverhead Town, where in November she was elected the first Latina supervisor in the town's nearly 228-year history, and the first on Long Island. The political newcomer said she is taking lessons learned — in teamwork, collaboration, problem-solving, leadership — at Ground Zero, as an NYPD Counterterrorism Bureau expert, and later as a college professor, into her new role.

“[During the campaign] I used the same concepts that worked across every level of society and business fields, the same management concepts — identify where something went wrong, talk to people, compare and contrast other races and get a good outcome,” Aguiar said.

Aguiar, 60, a Republican, now looks to tackle complex issues facing one of Suffolk’s largest town governments. She said she ran for office because she was concerned with issues such as overcrowded housing, rising enrollment in the school district, and keeping taxes affordable for seniors and young families. She believes her previous job experience, especially in management, makes her well-suited for the task.

“Running for office was a very profound experience,” said Aguiar, who was sworn in Jan. 1 for a two-year term at an annual salary of $115,148. “I would never trade the experience of meeting, and talking with and understanding my community. As a newcomer to politics, I never realized how much faith people have in public officials.”

Her goals are plentiful. Aguiar wants to:

• Make sure the precarious $40 million land sale of about 1,600 acres at the Enterprise Park at Calverton happens, because she plans to use the money to lower residents' tax bills;
• Create a multiagency task force to address school overcrowding, which she has declared a “crisis.” The school district's total K-12 enrollment on Feb. 18 was 5,772, 3.52% higher than the 5,576 districtwide enrollment in February 2019, according to school district officials; 
• Help reinvigorate Riverhead's downtown, partly by creating more flexible zoning that would allow for a mix of housing for younger adults and older residents that is affordable.

“We heard the public and we heard their concerns,” Aguiar said. “I need to see some of the issues from the inside-out. ... I need to see the root of the problems and ask questions.”

Considered a ‘go-getter’

Some of Aguiar’s colleagues in law enforcement and education said her reputation as a team player will lead to success in her new job.

Aguiar served with the NYPD for 20 years, working first as an undercover police officer before being promoted to detective in the department’s warrant division. She was later promoted to sergeant before moving to the Counterterrorism Bureau. 

Gloria Ortiz, 57, a detective in Counterterrorism who met Aguiar in 2002 while both worked there, said she admired Aguiar’s work ethic in preparing every day for the job.

“She’s a go-getter. There’s nothing that she’s afraid of,” Ortiz said. “And she would work along with you. She made us feel like she was one of us.”

After Aguiar retired from the bureau in 2003, she began teaching college courses online, and her team mentality and collaborative tendencies again stood out. John P. Dolan, faculty director of the School of Security and Global Studies at American Public University System, an online school where Aguiar still teaches security management and intelligence studies programs, said she works closely with her students.

“She has a strong bond with her students, and one of her greatest pleasures is to work on their graduate thesis and capstone projects,” Dolan said, the latter referring to experience-based projects in which students take what they’ve learned during their graduate studies and apply it to examine a specific idea. “She is a self-starter, responsive to requests and a willing collaborator.”

In the past year, Aguiar said she had begun to look at Riverhead’s government and believed her education and experience with business and management would make her an ideal candidate for the supervisor’s position. Despite her lack of town government experience, Aguiar said she never doubted whether her decision to run for office was a good idea.

In a town with a Hispanic population that has increased over the years and now totals about 20%, Aguiar campaigned on a pledge to represent all the town’s nearly 34,000 residents. She outpolled Democrat incumbent Laura Jens-Smith by about 700 votes in what was widely viewed as an upset.

“Yes, I am of Latina descent, but I didn’t run for office based on my ethnicity or gender,” Aguiar said. “It’s been constantly brought up, but my candidacy was about the people and the issues.” 

Aguiar said another priority in the pending EPCAL sale between the town and venture group Calverton Aviation and Technology is the preservation of 1,050 acres that civic and pro-environment groups want protected.

Aguiar also plans to focus on finding potential solutions to the high enrollment facing several schools in the Riverhead Central School District and ensuring Riverhead’s financial stability.

She said that stability could come in the form of exploring public-private partnerships, such as the planned expansion of the Long Island Science Center on Peconic Avenue. The center will be next to a proposed town square for which the town in December received an $800,000 grant from the Long Island Regional Economic Development Council.

Long Island officials previously have stated that such partnerships could offset the expenses for municipalities on such projects.

Loved to compete as a kid

Aguiar grew up in the Bronx with her father, Alexander Aguiar, a building custodian, and her mother, Luz, a seamstress, who both emigrated from Puerto Rico. A self-described “tomboy,” Aguiar said she was always drawn to sports — and still is, as she admitted to being a “die-hard” Yankees fan and is still working on her golf game. She fondly remembers days playing stickball with her brothers.

She was born a triplet, with brothers Alexander and Melvin. Aguiar also has a sister, Nancy, 65, and another brother, Rodney, 55.

“I liked the fact that I was with my brothers, so I tried to compete with them,” Aguiar recalled. “I became friends with their friends, and I saved my money to have the best stickball [bat] and the best ball, so they would come to me to have it.

“I said of course they could have it, but only if they let me play,” she added, smiling at the memory as she sat in her Town Hall office last month, an hour before only her second regular meeting of the Riverhead Town Board.

Aguiar described her teen years in high school as a “wonderful time in my life” when she made many friends. However, Aguiar added, she seldom watched TV and preferred instead to read.

“I was more focused on reading and learning about the world. It didn’t matter to me [what book], I’d pick up a medical book and read it,” Aguiar said with a chuckle.

After graduating from high school in the Bronx, Aguiar said she felt drawn to public service. That eventually led her to interrupt her classes in 1983 at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan — after passing the Civil Service exam — to join the NYPD. She would later graduate from John Jay in 1986 with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice.

Aguiar was one of the first sergeants assigned to the Counterterrorism Bureau and had several responsibilities, including overseeing staff assigned to her and assisting in the security of the NYPD headquarters building and the bureau’s building after the 9/11 attacks, from which she said she is still dealing with injuries that she didn’t want to specify.

“It’s something that I saw from the beginning, and I was there when the last ambulance left,” Aguiar said of her 9/11 experience. “It’s a history that I have, and someday I want to put it all together. I have photographs from Day 1 all the way through, but ... [my experience] is something that I don’t feel like I need to expose. I want to keep that private and I want to do my job.

“I’m representing everyone,” Aguiar said of her election victory. “I am an inclusive person. That was well-received. That’s how I feel, and that’s how I intend to carry out my oath of office.”