After eight years of dedicated policework, Oak Park’s first K-9 officer retired from the city’s Department of Public Safety on March 31, alongside his handler, Officer Michael Hodakoski.

K-9 Mase was named after Mason Samborski, an Oak Park public safety officer who was killed on duty in 2008. The nine-year-old Belgian Malinois has tracked numbers of suspects throughout his career, helping police maintain the safety of residents in Oak Park and the surrounding areas of Metro Detroit.

“Officer Hodakoski and Mase have been on hundreds of deployments throughout the state of Michigan,” says Oak Park Public Safety Director Steve Cooper. “They have been directly responsible for tracking and apprehending countless suspects and recovering voluminous amounts of evidence and weapons, which led to taking some of the most dangerous criminals off the street. To both, we owe a debt of gratitude.”

A public safety officer of 25 years, Hodakoski has served Oak Park as a field training officer, detective, evidence technician, and president of the Oak Park Police Officers Association of Michigan. After weeks of extensive training, he became Oak Park’s first K-9 handler in 2017, resulting in a strong connection with Mase that has only continued to grow.



“It’s the best job in policework by far,” Hodakoski says. “We went out to Indiana with two trainers to do a dog selection, and him and I bonded. He just came right up to me, and I knew that he was the choice I was going to make. He does building search, area search, handler protection, and narcotics searches. One of the best qualities Mase has is tracking — we have probably one of the most successful tracking teams in Michigan.”

Officer Kyle Lawless will succeed Hodakoski as Oak Park’s designated K-9 handler. The unit’s new K-9 officer is named Vader, a 16-month-old Belgian Malinois that specializes in explosive detection. According to Oak Park’s K-9 unit supervisor, Lieutenant Joe Meier, Vader was selected to balance a greater concentration of narcotics dogs in the Metro Detroit area.

“With the changing times in the world, explosives dogs are becoming a more necessary tool to law enforcement,” Meier says. “Vader has the ability to detect firearms, whether it be in a car, on a person, whether it was thrown by somebody or firearms in schools. The need for explosives dogs is rising more and more in our society, unfortunately. It’s a necessary tool to have to keep the community safe.”

In the months leading up to Officer Hodakoski’s retirement, Oak Park Public Safety began meticulously looking for a new K-9 handler within the department, landing on Officer Lawless after an extensive evaluation of his experience and capabilities.

“It’s an extensive process,” Meier says. “When we look at a handler, we’re looking at the years of service of the officer, the maturity level of the officer — because this is a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week job. When Officer Lawless leaves work, that dog is going home with him. We’re looking at what kinds of decision-making he has. He’s going outside the community and working in other jurisdictions, so he has to have the experience and maturity to know what he’s doing and make the decisions necessary to do it.”
Left to Right: Adam Owczarzak with Officer Lawless and Vader.
Oak Park’s K-9 handler review process involves input from handlers and master trainers in surrounding jurisdictions and at-home interviews that ensure a proper off-duty living situation for the dog. Once Officer Lawless was selected, he traveled out of state to complete the necessary training and grow his relationship with Vader.

“The kennel does a great job at what’s called pre-servicing the dog, so the weeks of training were to teach me how to work the dog,” Lawless says. “Whether it’s as simple as leash control to watching how the dog alerts — every dog is different, so they have different quirks.”

K-9 Officer Vader was sworn into the Oak Park Public Safety Department in September of 2024, which allowed Officer Lawless to learn from Officers Hodakoski and Mase for several months before their retirement went into effect.

“Truthfully, I felt like I was in the perfect time in my personal life and my career to take this position on and do the best that I could at it,” Lawless says. “I started [with Oak Park Public Safety] on Officer Hodakoski’s shift, and that first shift really taught me how to be an officer. I was fortunate enough to work alongside him and become close personal friends with him as well, so it’s just awesome to succeed him in this position.”

“The biggest thing with Kyle is that he has the right attitude,” Hodakoski says. “He has the commitment level that it takes. He and I have been friends since he’s been here. When he wanted the position, he called me and was like, ‘I just wanted to ask you — if you had to do it all over again, would you do it?’ And I said, ‘Absolutely yes,’ without skipping a beat. He said, ‘That’s all I needed to hear.’”