A casual glance at a newspaper changed the life of not only a single Brooklyn mom, but the lives of her children, as well.
For Marilyn Ozuna, that casual glance came in 1994. Newly separated and facing a divorce, the Puerto Rican-born single mother of four was thumbing through the news in El Diario when she came across an ad to join the NYPD.
It was an epiphany laid out in newspaper ink.
“I said to myself, ‘This is it. This is where I’m going to work,’” she recalled, sitting in the muster room of the 81st Precinct stationhouse in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where she spent the first decade of her 25-year career. “‘This is where I’m going to show my children that we can do it. We can do anything.’”
But, at the time, little did she know that all four of her children would follow her into the NYPD, too.
Today, Ozuna, 62, is a retired detective. Two of her children, her oldest son, Jorge Ozuna, 37, and daughter Rose Martinez, 43, are NYPD detectives. A third, also named Marilyn Ozuna, is an NYPD cop. Her youngest son, Anthony Phillips, is poised to graduate the Police Academy.
Detective Marilyn Ozuna (center) with her daughters, Marilyn (left) and Rose, while the two daughters were in the Police Academy.(Courtesy of Marilyn Ozuna)
Ozuna said she never pushed her children to be police officers, but the stories she shared at the dinner table in their Bushwick home of the arrests she made and the people she helped clearly sank in.
“I always gave them their own choices, but I would tell them, ‘You gotta have a plan in life,’” the proud mom said. “I told them that the NYPD is a great place to work, and if I did it, anybody can do it. You could serve the community and help people.”
Ozuna joined the NYPD at 32. Her children were with her in spirit during her time at the Police Academy, one of the most grueling challenges the single mom ever faced.
“It was very tough,” she remembered. “I never worked out in my life and suddenly I’m told I had to run a mile and a half every day. But I said to myself, ‘I have to do this for my children.’”
The biggest obstacle was on the obstacle course — a 5-foot-high wall she had to climb over, she recalled.
Retired Detective Marilyn Ozuna, 62, center left, with three of her four children, Police Cadet Anthony Philips, 24, left, Police Officer Marilyn G. Ozuna, 34, right, and Detective Rose Martinez, 43, center right, outside of the 81st Precinct in Brooklyn, Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2025. (Shawn Inglima/ New York Daily News)
“You can’t graduate unless you get over that wall,” she remembered. “But my classmates would support me. They would say, ‘Do it for your children. They’re on the other side of that wall.’ And I did it.”
On the day she graduated, Ozuna had an inkling Jorge was going to be a cop.
“All four of my children were there,” she remembered. “It was such an honor for me. I wanted to instill something in them and give them something that would stay with them through their life.”
After the ceremony, Jorge came up and asked to wear her police hat.
“He said, ‘Give me your hat!’” she said. “I let him wear the hat and he said, ‘I’m going to be a police officer.’ And 20 years later, he graduated the academy.”
And an NYPD legacy family was born.
Rose, Ozuna’s oldest, was 12 when her mother decided to join the academy.
“At first, I had no concept of what she was doing,” Rose recalled. “I was like ‘You’re going to go through what?’ And then she went through and made it and I was like, ‘You really did it.’”
“Just watching her being able to do it, it showed me that women can do anything if they put mind to it,” Rose said. “She juggled being a full-time mother of four while in the academy, and if she can do it, it was something I want to do.”
Rose joined the Police Academy in 2015 after a stint as a 911 dispatcher. Joining with her was her younger sister Marilyn, who was a school safety officer before becoming a cop.
“That wall is still there,” Marilyn joked about her own time in the academy. “We had the bruises to prove it.”
Det. Jorge Ozuna with mother Marilyn.
Marilyn is now a cop in Harlem. Rose is assigned to the department’s Information Technology Bureau. Jorge works at the department’s Real Time Crime Center.
Anthony, who was also a school safety officer, is finishing up his academy coursework. Being a cop is something he’s wanted to do since high school, he said.
“I actually told my mom the day I graduated that by age 23 I was going to be a police officer,” he said. “Even when I worked for school safety, sometimes I would come into the local precinct on a job and I saw what was going on, and I definitely saw myself being a cop.”
Phillips, who just turned 24, is weeks away from graduating. Whenever he talks about his family, his classmates are stunned that she could raise four children while going through the academy.
“They think she’s Superwoman,” he joked.
The Ozuna family line in the NYPD is expected to continue after Anthony graduates. Rose’s son, who is 22, is considering joining, she said.
Ozuna was born in Puerto Rico and came to New York at age 5. Growing up in Bushwick, her parents only spoke Spanish at home.
Looking back at Hispanic Heritage Month, which just ended this week, Ozuna said her heritage was an asset during her time as a cop.
“We always kept to our heritage and I would always tell my children to keep learning Spanish,” she said. “Especially on this job, the community can relate to you better if they can communicate with you.”
“If you can communicate with someone in their language, it gives them a sense of security. They confide in you better,” her daughter Marilyn said.
Marilyn Ozuna’s story of raising four kids as a single mom also helped out on the job, she said.
“When I would go to a job and would have to counsel single parents who think they can’t do this or can’t do that, I say to them, ‘Let me tell you a little story,’” she said with a bright smile across her face. “I tell them, ‘I have four kids and I can do this. So you can do anything.’”
“I like to leave people in a better place from where I found them.”
Originally Published: October 18, 2025 at 5:12 PM EDT