Mario Oliveira handled light duties in his first week back to work with the Somerville Police Department.

Oliveira: Treasure life

By George P. Hassett

A Somerville detective shot and almost killed in November quietly returned to work last week after almost five months away from the job.

Mario Oliveira handled light duties in his first week back to work with the Somerville Police Department. One thing that didn’t change for the decorated detective was a willingness to work hard: on his first day back he stayed beyond his eight hour shift.

“I’m a workaholic,” Oliveira joked in an interview with The Somerville News this week. “If anything getting shot and being away so long has given me more fire to work.”

Oliveira was shot five times – twice in the stomach, twice in the chest and once in the arm – as he served an arrest warrant to a 21-year-old Somerville man suspected of selling guns to gang members. Doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital said Oliveira was nearly dead when he arrived for treatment.

“If there’s one thing I learned, it’s make your time on Earth on count,” he said. “Especially police officers, we get caught up in hectic lifestyles and work but everything can be gone in a split second. I’m grateful to be able to go home, look at my family and tell them I love them.”

“I appreciate life a lot more now,” he said. “I don’t sweat the small stuff.”

Days after the shooting Oliveira said he learned his wife was pregnant. “I would have died with a child I didn’t know and left my wife pregnant,” he said. The baby is expected in July, he said.

Oliveira said he was overwhelmed by the outpouring of support after the shooting – cards, phone calls and well wishes from other officers, victims in crimes he’d investigated and Somerville citizens helped in his recovery. He said he stayed active in ongoing cases from home but is excited to be back full time.

Oliveira expects to return to his old duties with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms investigating gun crimes in Somerville and other communities but he will remember the lessons he learned in the shooting and its aftermath.

“I learned a lot about myself and I learned that this community in Somerville cares,” he said.