COEUR D'ALENE -- Winston Brooks used to patrol the courts of the WCC as a point guard with the Gonzaga Bulldogs. These days he’s wearing a different uniform, patrolling the streets of Coeur d’Alene as a police officer in a community that embraced him before he ever landed at Gonzaga.

College athletes often start their careers outside of sports in or around the cities where they played their college ball so in that respect Brooks is no different than many others. But the career path he's chosen and the journey he's taken to get there are very different.

Brooks spent two years as a point guard for the Gonzaga Bulldogs, playing on some of the most talented teams in school history. But before that he spent a year at Christianson Gym in Coeur d'Alene with the North Idaho College Cardinals.

“He was one of the best point guards we've ever had. You know, he was the coordinator out there. He ran the show. He saw people," NIC Head Athletic Trainer Randy Boswell said.

But now, seven years removed from his playing days, Brooks is back in Coeur d'Alene and he's traded in his basketball shoes for a badge and a gun.

“I never thought in a million years that I would become an officer,” Brooks said. “It's been a whole different turnaround on life for me."

Brooks grew up in the projects in Richmond, Virginia with a mother who struggled to provide for her three boys and where trouble seemed to lurk around every corner.

“The cops weren't welcome in my neighborhood so I always thought cops were bad people. And then when you actually get out, you grow up a little bit, you mature a little bit, you get into the force like I did. You kind of see the other side of it, and you see that cops are really there to help,” he said.

Help is just what Brooks received when he arrived at NIC and was embraced like family.

“There's a lot of people here that took care of me and I just felt like this was a nice place to be. It wasn't easy being away from family, but they kind of made it a little easier with the type of people that were taking care of us,” he said.

Those people included longtime NIC trainer Randy Boswell said.

"I saw the talent, I knew his history, and I asked him, I said, 'What do you want to do when basketball is over?' He said, 'All I want to do is make enough money to get my mom out of the projects.' I mean, how good is that?"

Brooks did that, moving his mom and brothers to Spokane, and now he's giving back to the community where he learned what family was all about.

“When I come here to the streets, working the streets for patrol, I interact with a lot of people, I made sure they're OK. So this was great, a great force for me to be hired in to, try to help out," Brooks said.

His superiors say his basketball background and his competitive streak help him on the streets.

“I’m a strong believer in anything you've done outside that gives you stress is going to help you here because if you've never been in a stressful environment, this is a difficult place to be," Sergeant Jason Ayers with the Coeur d'Alene Police Department said.

“He wants to go out, he wants to answer more calls than the other guys, he wants to write more tickets than the other guys, make more arrests. I mean, so that competitive spirit is absolutely a beneficial thing in this job,” Coeur d’Alene Police Sergeant Brandon McCormick said.

But perhaps the way Officer Brooks sees the streets like he saw the floor is his most beneficial talent.

“You gotta see things, you know, like if someone's moving over there or tabs expired or someone's running or, you know, you gotta see those things," he said.

After wearing a blue Zags uniform back in the day Brooks still gets recognized in his new blue uniform.

“People are looking at him like, Wwhere do i know that guy from’,” SGT. McCormick said.

“Everywhere he goes, we go to dinner, we go to a call, we're downtown on Sherman, everybody knows him, and so it's kind of a running joke, that, you know, 'Can't you go anywhere?' 'Is the paparazzi going to start following us, too’,” SGT. Ayers said.

Brooks says he doesn't mind a bit.

“It’s nice to be known ‘cause, how it helps in a way is a lot of people will speak to me. And I speak to a lot of people and that's kind of loosening up that intensity or that hatred towards cops,” he said.

Brooks takes special pride in talking to kids and making sure they stay on the right track.

“I think this is something that is just right for him, because he could have been on the other end of it,” Boswell said.

So the kid from the rough streets of Richmond, Virginia is now making the streets of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho safer and friendlier. That's bigger than any play he made during his days at Gonzaga, even if that's still the reason you recognize him.

Officer Brooks says he loves his job but perhaps the best thing about working for the Coeur d'Alene Police Department is that he's able to stay close to both the Gonzaga and NIC basketball programs.

Story by KXLY4 Sports Director Derek Deis