‘Everything happens for a reason’: BART Police officer played semi-pro soccer before joining department

When Tyler Mauldin was three years old, her father handed her a basketball. Instead of dribbling it, she started kicking it. Her dad, who played basketball for Stanford University, realized he needed a new approach. He bought her a soccer ball and enrolled her in a recreational league.

At 10, Mauldin began playing competitive soccer, training on nearly a dozen different teams to hone her skills and perfect her impressive natural talent. She knew one thing for sure: She was going to be a professional soccer player.

But her story took an unexpected turn her sophomore year of high school. Racing down the field to score a goal during a high school match, the opposing team’s goalie struck her cleat into Mauldin’s knee. Mauldin screamed. She knew immediately something was gravely wrong.

At the hospital later that night, the physician delivered Mauldin somber news: her meniscus and MCL were torn, her ACL partially torn.

“All my college scholarship offers got pulled,” Mauldin, now a police officer with the BART Police Department, said recently from BPD Headquarters near Lake Merritt in Oakland.

Mauldin spent the 11 months after the accident resting and healing, and – almost a year after her injury – made it back onto the field.

“I definitely wasn’t at my best, but I worked really hard to get back,” she said. “I got a full-ride scholarship and took it.”

Mauldin, who graduated with All-West Region First Team Honors, went on to the University of California, Riverside, where she studied biology and played on the university soccer team.

Though she was not drafted out of college, she did walk on to the reserve team for the Boston Breakers after she graduated from UC Riverside. The Boston Breakers are a professional soccer team in the National Women’s Soccer League, but the reserve team is considered semi-professional.

Mauldin played for the Breakers for a year before tragedy struck once more. While driving, a teenaged girl without a license ran a stop sign and T-boned Mauldin’s car. She suffered her fourth concussion and was out for three months.

Officer Mauldin playing soccer for UC Riverside. Photo courtesy of Tyler Mauldin.

“For me it was kind of like, okay, this is your awakening,” she said. “Maybe now it’s time for you to go back home and start a career.”

“Sports,” she continued. “Doesn’t last forever.”

Mauldin moved back home to Fairfield, Calif., where she grew up, and began substitute teaching at Crystal Middle School in Suisun City. It changed her life. She chose middle school because she thought the tween students would be the “most impressionable” – and the most likely to learn from her and her experiences.

“I could just tell from conversations I had with [the students] that they grew up in a troubled environment, in a sense,” she said. “They didn’t have the guidance or the help that they needed. And a lot of them had misconceptions about law enforcement.”

Mauldin grew up in a family of police offers. Her grandfather is retired LAPD and LA Port PD. Her dad is retired Oakland PD. And her mother is retired Fairfield PD.

“Cop life was not my plan at all,” she said. “I thought I was going to go right, and then I went left.”

She realized that she could have a greater impact on children’s lives if she went into law enforcement, and while pursuing a master’s degree in criminal justice, she decided to apply to BPD. Her parents encouraged her, knowing she could “get in young” and work her way up.

In November, Mauldin will have worked for the department for five years. In that time, she’s stood out as an exemplary officer with a soft spot for kids. Though she no longer plays soccer, she often coaches for her previous youth teams and attends their games.

“We are so excited to have Officer Mauldin as a member of the BART Police Team,” said BPD Chief Ed Alvarez. “Her experiences both on the field and off the field have made her such a huge asset to our department as well as to our community.”  

Being a former athlete, she said, has greatly impacted her approach to policing. Serving on a police department is not unlike being a teammate, with the sergeant or lieutenant acting like a coach.

“You all have your opinions and your personalities, but you have to find that balance,” she said. “You have to respect someone else’s opinion.

She appreciates the tightknit nature of BPD, where everyone knows each other’s names and can rely on each other for support. She said she’s stayed at BPD largely because of “the people” she serves and works with.

“It’s very interesting how everything happens for a reason,” she said. “If it wasn’t for [my past experiences] I wouldn’t be where I am today. I wouldn’t have had the perseverance when things got hard to continue fighting through.”

The BART Police Department is hiring. Learn more about the department on bart.gov/about/police and explore employment opportunities at bart.gov/about/police/employment. The department is offering a $15,000 hiring bonus for laterals and academy graduates.