Steve Peacock

An independent investigative writer with a decade of reporting experience.

The short version is this: I'm a former security officer for billionaire hotel queen Leona Helmsley, but I wisely changed careers (unrelated to Leona's federal prison sentence) and became an investigative journalist and author. I am now a soon-to-be high-school English teacher.

The extended story is as follows: After growing up in the Jersey suburbs, I returned to my place of birth, New York City, in 1987 after accepting a job as "house officer" of the Helmsley Palace hotel. After two years I left the Palace for to become (for some strange reason) an unarmed, uniformed Public Safety Officer on Roosevelt Island. After being shot one lovely afternoon by a retired cop (in a crosswalk in front of an elementary school, no less), a little more than a year later I returned to the Palace, where I stayed until the end of 1992.

I returned to the Jersey Shore and eventually enrolled in Stockton College near Atlantic City, where in 1997 I finally earned a bachelors degree in communications. I quickly landed a job as staff writer for the now-defunct Wall Herald in Monmouth County, where I happened to get perched in the newsroom next to a lovely young lady named Jennifer, whom I married in what seemed like three days later. After working at a few community weekly newspapers throughout Ocean, Monmouth and Middlesex counties, I received that so-called lucky break with a company named Inside Washington Publishers in Artlington, Va., where I was trained to become an investigative journalist specializing in government policymaking and regulation, with a particular focus on the telecommunications, IT, and broadcasting industries.

I left IWP after they re-assigned me from their Washington Telecom Week publication to FDA Week. accepting a job at a competitor, Telecommunications Reports International. In 1991, Communications Daily, Washington, D.C.'s premier telecom policy publication, made me their Capitol Hill reporter.

During this time frame Jen gave birth to our two lovely daughters.

After the 9/11 attacks, I was nearly driven nuts by the U.S. Congress, whose members never tired of saying, "Things have changed since September 11th" over and over. The final straw for me was the day one of my bosses said at the end of a Monday morning editorial meeting, "Alright, let's get out there and exploit the shit out of homeland security for industry!"

Jen and I eventually fled to the quiet hills of Northeastern Pennsylvania, where we continue to reside. Likewise, I continue to perform investigative writing -- not for the benefit of industry -- but for the benefit of my fellow citizens, who deserve to know exactly how the Washington bureaucrats are looting the Treasury with the help of their industry benefactors.

I'm still waiting for Hollywood to buy the rights to my book "Hotel Dick: Harlots, Starlets, Thieves & Sleaze," a memoir about the Helmsley Palace. I'm not holding my breath, but I'm hoping that supporters of independent journalists such as myself will buy a copy to help sustain the good fight.