I am very fortunate to have had the opportunities—and many adventures—in my life and in my career.
The Williamson County Sheriff’s Department has a wealth of knowledge and expertise among its Reserve Officer corps. Among them, is Dr. Samuel Strauss, whose career experience is unmatched nearly anywhere. In short, his accomplishments literally range from the depths of our oceans all the way to Mars.
After graduating from medical school, he volunteered to serve in the U.S. Navy and was assigned as the medical officer on a nuclear submarine. He also completed two months of Navy diving and salvage training because, he says, “Submariners, even doctors, are all put through what everyone else is trained to do.”
After ten years in the Navy, he went into the Air Force and rose to Senior Flight Surgeon. Again, he went through pilot training to gain familiarity with the planes and the pilot experience. “I wanted to have a good understanding of what they went through every day.”
WHAT’S RETIREMENT?
After the Air Force, despite his underwater and flight training, he was too old to become an astronaut, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be invaluable at NASA. “Diving and living on submarines is a lot like being on the Space Station, so I had the perfect combination of training to take care of them. They all fly, train, and do research in the air. Add spacewalk training under water and not too many people have the background to cross over.”
Dr. Strauss also worked on a multi-year study to re-engineer spacesuits that were causing repetitive shoulder injuries. “I figured out safety concerns by marrying the engineering with the medical perspective. I recommended changes the MIT folks could make to the suits, then corrected and re-oriented the tasks in the pool to avoid injury.”
Later he partnered with another doctor to create a medical kit algorithm that would support individual astronauts in the Mars Landing program. “It’s very specific with respect to what each need, based on age, gender, risk factors, medical history, etc. The finished program allows NASA to plug in the variables for each astronaut, create a kit, then human doctors verify the final plan.”
When he retired from NASA in 2013, he was looking for his next challenge, and went back to school. He exhausted all the law enforcement and criminal justice courses he could find, and when he was done, he had qualified for a peace officer license. “I loved criminal law and DNA forensics, so I went to work as an investigator.”
When Sheriff Chody created a Cold Case unit, Dr. Strauss was quick to apply for the opportunity to serve as a Reserve Detective. He moves, every day, between four cases, which he says can be daunting because of the volume of details that have built up over the years.
Once again, his expertise proves valuable, particularly when he can present medical evidence to the D.A., request testing, and assess DNA data to connect dots in new ways.
“This is a personal job and it’s and about people. We work for the day we can bring closure to a family, and I love being part of this group of dedicated detectives.”
Given the story he told, that seems like pretty high praise, and good fortune for Williamson County.