When I Grow Up - Thomas Cooper was the youngest born to a well adjusted and well thought of couple. Ray Jr, was a family man, ran the family carpet cleaning business. So needless to say they were not poor, but they didn't live in the lap of luxury. Once Cooper was in school, his mother went to work as a part time payroll clerk. And his brother was always bossing him around and picking on him… of course Cooper was just as mean back, so it evened out.
While his father was hoping that both his boys would follow him in his carpet cleaning foot steps, little Cooper had something else in mind. When he was in third grade, there was an assembly with cops telling about their jobs. Cooper thought it was so cool that right there he decided to be a policeman when he grew up. While this changed often to things like cowboy and infomercial guy, he eventually would go back to wanting to be a cop. His dad wasn't too happy and often tried to get Cooper to pick the family business, even hiring the teenage boy to teach him the tricks of the trade. Cooper's brother was all about the family business and quite the kiss ass.
Reaching For The Dream - So his teenage years were full of school and working for his dad. He also met this pretty young thing named Maggie. She was in the same class as him, and in Cooper's opinion really really hot. She snubbed him at first, thinking of him as this big idiot. He wasn't one of the popular kids at the time, so that didn't help him much. She didn't really consider him an option until he started losing some of that baby fat. So around the end of his Junior year in high school, she finally agreed to a date with him. On that first date they completely hit it off. Shortly after they graduated high school, Cooper and Maggie got married. Of course, their parents were not happy about it.
After high school Cooper started right away to try and get into the academy. His father was furious about it and the two did not do too much talking after that. Maggie of course was supportive. First time he took the test, he did horrible. But he was determined, it took a lot of late nights of studying, major amounts of working out, and several attempts at the testing to finally be accepted. IT was a huge relief when it finally happened.
Jersey Cop – While he was away at the academy, it put a strain on his marriage with Maggie. She didn't like him being so far away for such an extended amount of time. Of course, she started out supportive, but it also didn't help that Cooper told her that they should wait on having kids. She wasn't too keen on that idea and figured that he was cheating on her while away. But they were both still young, often went out to the bars and clubs, hanging out with all their old friends. Every time she brought up the kid question though, Cooper would be quick to change the subject. What he didn't tell her was that he worried about leaving her with a kid or two to raise on her own if he died in the line of duty.
The academy was difficult, but Cooper just managed to graduate. Didn't make the top of the class, but he wasn't last. The PT was kicking his butt a lot of the time. Either way, he found himself assigned to a station in New Jersey.
He could probably tell you some stories about crazies he's met. Like trying to chase down a nude man and how gross it was to try to get him cuffed. Or even the time an idiot of a car jacker wanted to take the police car that Cooper was in. Then of course there were the traffic stops. His shifts were far from boring, that was sure. Often times however, he'd come home in a bad mood or cranky. It really put a strain on their marriage, and after five years as a police officer, his wife was on the verge of leaving him. He had to make some choices in his life.
Freakin' Detectives Exam– His captain approached him one day after shift and asked Cooper to consider taking the detective exams. While he didn't have a huge arrest record and he didn't pull over people en mass, he was still a good cop and could be a good detective. To be made detective meant a good pay raise, which meant they could afford to have kids. With their marriage kind of rocky, Cooper felt that maybe trying for detective and giving his wife what she wanted the most was a good idea. So he started working on passing the detectives exam. Took him about two years to pass the stupid thing. It was like once he got in to take the oral test he froze up. The board exam was murder for him. Something about sitting before his peers while they grilled him about procedures and tossing him scenarios, made him nervous. He'd fumbles hi answers and blank occasionally. It was frustrating for him, cause he was just barely failing it, but always.. just. He had become resigned to the fact that he wasn't going to pass this damn thing, but Maggie insisted he try one more time.
He passed…. Just barely.
Thrilled her to no end when he waltzed home to give her the news, of course that night she decided they should start on that family. That in it's own right was a huge trial.
Never Marry Young - A newly made homicide detective and the attempts at bringing a new member into the family, everything just seemed right. Their marriage seemed renewed and happy again. And then she got pregnant. Wow… that was an eye opener for Cooper. Maggie didn't do that pregnancy thing well. She was sick all the time, kinda cranky. He thought women who got pregnant were suppose to be happy and glowing, not pukey and bitchy. So while it was suppose to be this great thing in their lives, it just kind of left him kind of disenchanted with the whole thing. That's not saying it didn't get better. Around the sixth month, Maggie's system calmed down and they were actually allowed to be happy about the coming baby.
The day little Ellen was born, Cooper felt like he had a new purpose in his life. From day one, that little girl had him wrapped around her finger. Of course, there were the trials. Maggie wasn't coping well with the long nights and trying to be a stay at home mom. So again life just seemed to go from perfect to strained. Tired of it Cooper started to throw himself into his work, finding reasons to stay late. He slipped over to narcotics cause it allowed him to be gone for long periods of time while he was undercover and plus he felt he was making things safer for his little girl. It was during this time that he met this hot little number. She came into the PD to file a report about a stolen bike and well…. yeah. With how crappy his home life was, he gave into temptation. The affair lasted six months before his wife found out. She didn't take it well at all. Ever see those movies where men come home to find their clothes on the ground outside the house? Seems it doesn't just happen in movies.
Being Single Isn't All That - Maggie was pretty quick to get him out of her life. Can't really blame her, but Cooper would have rather tried to fix things. He really did love his wife and he knew he screwed up pretty bad, but she would have none of it. So Cooper moved out of their home and into a tiny one room apartment in the city. He was given visitation right with his little two year old daughter with a clause that said that when she was older he'd start getting her on weekends and some holidays. Of course, make matters worse, that hot little number wouldn't even talk to him after the divorce was final. So he had to try and relearn what it was like to date. Dating wasn't working all that great either, a lot of hit and miss. So he got into sports again, he'd always been a football fan. More bizarre was that he got into making balloon animals. His interest had been piqued when he was at a restaurant that had a guy running around making them. Picture this… Cooper, in his boxers and a white tee, sprawled out on the couch, watching football… and making balloon animals?!
Work kept him busy enough beyond that. Especially as the years passed on. Bizarre cases started to pass his desk. Things that just could not be true. Cases such as a woman who got so pissed off at her husband, her hands burst into flames and she them proceeded to incinerate the man. Or the guy that would draw the blood out of his victims skin. There was nothing to explain these cases. They fact that he found them interesting got him laughed at often… Or course, they wouldn't laugh for long.
Boom! - Cooper can tell you where he was and what he was doing when the bomb blew up Midtown. He was at his desk, working on typing up a report for a case he was working on. One of the rookies leaned out of the break room and gave a sharp whistle, telling everyone they needed to come look. It was all over the new stations. Pictures of a freshly devastated Midtown, occupied them for days. It was horrible. After that it seemed like the odd cases started to increase, like a man phasing through walls to steal. It was crazy, but his co-workers were laughing less and less.
They stopped mocking him all together when Senator Petrelli announced that explosion was done by a twisted man named Sylar and exposed the evolved members of society. It floored Cooper to think that there were people that powerful out there. It was almost frightening. It was enough to sour a man to the evolved plight. Then people in his own department started to come out of the closet, so to speak. Good men and women with good reputations. It left him torn. Seemed like with anything, there was the good and the bad.
Lindy-Who? Act – So this old guy comes out in the news and says he's evolved. Cooper never heard of him and didn't understand how he was really important enough to get his own law. But in Cooper's opinion the Linderman Act was a good thing. Especially for the police who have to deal with these people on a day to day basis, especially the bad ones. In his mind, if someone was afraid to register, they obviously had something to hide.
Even he knew the system was flawed, but some things are sadly necessary to keep the public safe. This didn't mean he had problems with the evolved, far from it. His fellow men and women in blue, that came out about their abilities, were trusted. The ability didn't change who they were on the inside, but Cooper was never jealous about their abilities.
Karma Is A Bitch – Around the time of all this, his daughter was getting older and Cooper was realizing that he wasn't getting any younger. Especially, when his little baby girl started talking about boys. Kinda freaked him out really, cause if she was getting older, it meant he was getting older. In his quest to try and hold onto some of his youth, he really did something stupid. He won't admit it, but well… yeah.
There was a strip club that he frequented and in this club was a stripper named Daisy. She always seemed to treat him nicer then the other strippers and so he thought she felt something for him. What was interesting was that she was fifteen years younger then him. To make a long story short, they got married. That's right, the detective married a stripper. It was full of drama from the start. Seriously, what did he expect? Well, he expected her to quit her job cause he could afford to support her if she wanted to go to college like she said she wanted. And supposedly she was.
Boy, did his find out what she was really doing. The money he gave her for college was banked in a special account. Not just that when she was supposedly at school she was hanging out with a guy she said was just a friend. Well, when Cooper found out, he was pissed… But she said was sorry, she was wrong and begged his forgiveness. Funny how he found himself in the position he put Maggie. It was that fact that made him decide to give Daisy another chance. It lasted about another 6 months before he found out she was using his money for drugs for her and her boyfriend at the time, Bug. Yeah, that's right Bug. Cooper realized right about then what an idiot he had been and kicked her to the curb. What the hell had he been thinking?
Into The Chaos - Freshly divorced, which took him on a wild ride, he ended up with a court order to pay this one alimony too even though she had cheated on him…. Twice. Of course, she was a pain in the ass about it., so he was ready to get far from her. His relief came with an email circulating the precinct. It stated that the NYPD was sustaining heavy losses to their force. They we looking for people to transfer in to take up the slack in the Homicide department. Wanting to get away from his newly made ex-wife, Cooper decided to take up the offer and moved to New York as a Narc. He probably doesn't truly understand what he's getting into, but he seems rather confident he can take what is thrown at him.
