A state trooper you may be familiar with — not from traffic stops, but as the spokesman for the New York State Police in the Rochester region — is hanging up his stetson.

But even in retirement, Mark O'Donnell is working to attract the next generation of the "long gray line."

For him, retirement is not the end of the road. On a day at the golf course, it’s just the beginning of the fairway. He expects a lot of days like it. Following a 35-year career as a New York state trooper, there will be a lot more time for it.

“It was a tough decision, but once I made it, it was the right decision," O'Donnell said.

If he looks and sounds familiar, that’s because he is. He spent more than two decades as public information officer for the state police's Troop E.

“People say 'you look taller on TV,' and I say it’s because of the hat," O'Donnell said.

It's a job that took him virtually everywhere in Western New York, the Finger Lakes and beyond.

“Going down and 911, you know, going down [to] the Trade Center, 49 days-ish down there," O'Donnell said. “We were taking people in and out of Ground Zero and working at some of the makeshift morgues. And you had family members coming up with pictures of family members, trying to find them and we did the best we could. It was a tough detail, but that’s what we do.”

He experienced Hurricane Katrina, the deadly Buffalo blizzard and the line-of-duty deaths of fellow troopers and police officers.

Literally thousands of calls for service. His bags were packed and ready to go at a moment’s notice.

“You're never going to a call where everything's great," O'Donnell said. "You're going to a home or a business where things are sideways and they need our help."

The relaxation of retirement is much different than the everyday stresses of the job.

The protests of 2020 in response to high-profile police custody deaths in Rochester and around the country, and the anti-law enforcement sentiment which lingered, had nothing to do with his decision to call it a career, says O’Donnell.

“Not one ounce, really, because if that was going to have anything to do with it, I would have retired during the protests, or going during, you know, when we were, we were working, you know 12-14-hour days during the protests and, and that's that," he said. "What you sign up for, you got to be there for the good and the bad, and everything in between.”

The good also included a highlight from a golf course. O’Donnell was chosen to provide security for Tiger Woods during the 2013 PGA Championship.

“Nobody gets near Tiger," said O'Donnell. "So we walked seven days with him from the minute he got on Oak Hill grounds to the minute he left, and it was hot, it was uncomfortable, but it was a chance of a lifetime.”

It's stories like that O’Donnell tells in hopes of recruiting the next class of troopers. State police will start a recruiting drive in the summer.

“It’s not easy getting invited to the academy," said O'Donnell. "It’s extremely difficult. Recently we’ve had a difficult time, I say we, the state police have had a difficult time getting a certain amount of numbers to sign up for the exam. But I’m optimistic that might change.”

O'Donnell has decided it’s time for someone else to do the job, one that took him places he says he never could have imagined.

“You know, people are very receptive, 'hey, you represent the state police.' Well and ... and I hope I did," O'Donnell said. “I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”