With brothers in the war, she was part of the establishment; after rebellious period, decided to pursue law enforcement job
By CRAIG D. SCHENCK/Sentinel staff
Cape May County Commissioner Marie Hayes grew up in a family of first-responders and military members.
Instead of protesting the Vietnam war, as many teens of the era had, all four of Hayes’ brothers enlisted and served in the armed forces.
The 1973 graduate of Mainland Regional High School said her family background, more than the culture of the times, influenced her life’s journey — although she certainly took a detour.
During her high school days, she had what she called “a rebellious streak.”
“I made mistakes when I was younger. I got married two weeks out of high school. I never should have, didn’t have to, but I was rebellious,” Hayes said.
Fortunately for Hayes, she had a teacher at MRHS who showed faith in her and she used that and the support of her “patriotic family” to get on a path to success.
“I had a lot of good teachers who were really good mentors, too,” Hayes said, singling out former math teacher Donna Warren. “A lot of times when you’re a teenager you’re down on yourself, you don’t have a lot of faith in yourself and she always tried to instill that in me.”
Hayes said Warren saw something in her that she didn’t realize was there.
“She just never gave up on me. She always made me feel that I was worth more than that. Fortunately, I came out of that relationship — I had a child and she’s wonderful — then I met a guy who was a teacher at Mainland and he was basically the same way. He’s a mentor to kids and it’s a wonderful thing.”
Hayes said she wasn’t the best student in high school but flourished in college, which she attended partially because of Warren’s influence.
“She said to me, ‘Don’t underestimate yourself. You should be bettering yourself. Think about college,’ and eventually I did and I earned my associate degree in criminal justice at ACCC and went on and got my bachelor’s at Thomas Edison. I can honestly say that she probably had a big influence on me because even though she knew I was going to get married, which she was really not happy about, she just instilled ‘don’t let it stop here.’”
Hayes said one of her four brothers was a chief of the Margate Fire Department and another, who has since passed, was a sergeant in the Egg Harbor Township Police Department, so public service was in her blood.
“I can remember, I wanted to be a cop from the time I was young. Growing up when I grew up, it was very anti-police. The Vietnam war was raging,” she said. “When I first told my mom that I wanted to be a cop, she said to me ‘Oh, honey, girls don’t become cops.’”
But her mother’s attitude changed. After her marriage failed, she said, her mother told her it was time to take personal responsibility.
“When things started to go sideways, my mom was the one who came to me and said ‘Enough is enough. You have to make something of your life now,’ and she volunteered to watch my little girl — my daughter was a year old or so — and she babysat my daughter while I went back to school,” Hayes said. “She was fully supportive of me becoming a police officer.”
Hayes started taking classes at Atlantic Cape Community College, eventually earning an associate degree. She later earned a bachelor’s degree in human services, with a concentration in criminal justice, from Thomas Edison State College and is a 1996 graduate of the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Va.
Hayes said she has always been interested in juvenile justice, possibly because she was a victim of sexual abuse when she was young.
“That probably molded my life and made me so intent on helping people,” she said. “I wanted to be the cop that if it’s going to help kids, that’s what I’m going to be and that’s what the majority of my career ended up being.”
She created the Juvenile Conference Committee in Egg Harbor Township in the 1970s and when then-Cape May County Prosecutor Don Charles was looking for someone who had a background in juvenile justice, she got the job.
During the majority of her career, she was assigned to child abuse and sexual assault investigations. Hayes rose through the ranks, being promoted to sergeant of detectives, lieutenant of detectives and retiring as captain of detectives in 2009. She also served as vice president of PBA Local 59 and two terms as president of the Mid-Atlantic Association of Women in Law Enforcement.
After her retirement, Hayes was sworn into office Feb. 1, 2013, to fill an unexpired term on the Cape May County Board of Commissioners. She was re-elected in 2014, 2017 and 2019.
“I think having been in law enforcement, I served the public in my position. Being in law enforcement you have to make an awful lot of judgment calls. The main thing is you have to make decisions, and being in politics if you don’t make decisions then you’re not a leader. So you make a lot of decisions,” she said. “If I hadn’t have had my law enforcement background, I don’t know that I would have stayed in politics. It’s a tough business.”
She thinks the social aspects of high school helped form her personality.
“Your high school years can be tough. They can be a lot of fun and they can be pretty tough, too,” Hayes said. “I wasn’t part of sororities and stuff like that — that just didn’t appeal to me — but I never segregated myself to a group. I always just tried to be friendly with everybody. I think that it shaped my personality in the fact that that’s how I did my political and police work. I was very personable, could talk to just about anybody. I’m a talker. I like to be personable with people, and I think that’s how it shaped me.”
One of the defining moments of her younger years was when her brother Stanley returned from serving in Vietnam.
“I knew there was sentiment against the veterans but it never really hit me,” she said. “Then we went to the Pleasantville bus station and I’ll never forget, I saw him getting off the bus and jumped out of the car and ran to him and there were people going by in a car and they were yelling ‘Baby killer, baby killer’ and throwing their middle fingers up at him.”
“I don’t think it was until then that I realized the hate that was out there — really deep-seated hate — so having four brothers and a husband who were in the service during that time really affected me,” she continued.
Hayes said her family was firmly on the side of the establishment during the 1970s and she was not part of the counterculture of the time.
“Patriotism in our family was pretty strong,” she said, noting her parents instilled it in her family.