For a long time, Joseph Fox wondered if any current NYPD cop was wearing his father’s old shield number, 10956. When he started trying to find out in 2017, he got the chance to enjoy a little piece of his dad’s Police Department history.

Routinely, NYPD shield numbers are recycled after a service member retires, so it was conceivable that someone had the shield number.

At the time, Fox was the chief of the NYPD’s Transit Bureau and as it turned out, he didn’t have to look far to find his answer. His search led him to P.O. Christie Titus, a transit cop who was issued shield number 10956 when she joined the NYPD in 2011.

“When I found out who had my dad’s old shield number, and that it was a transit cop, I knew I had to meet that person,” Fox said.

He asked that Titus be brought to his office. But he neglected to state the reason. All she was told was that she would meet the chief in his office and to wear her dress uniform. 

“When you hear the chief wants to see you, it does make you nervous,” she recalled. “They kind of kept me in the dark a little — just for fun.”

Titus walked into Fox’s office and despite his attempts to put her at ease with small talk, she remained on edge. “And I was just asking her, ‘Hey, so how’s everything? How’s the job going?’ She was answering me but it was obvious she was wondering why she had been summoned,” Fox said.

However, as she looked around the office, things started to clear up. For one thing, Chief Fox had a picture on his desk of his father wearing his shield. For another, he had a replica of the shield on his desk.

“So I pointed to her shield and said, ‘That’s my dad’s shield and you’ve got it,’ ” he recalled.

At first, Titus mistakenly thought that Fox wanted her to give up the shield number because he planned to have it given to his son, NYPD Sgt. Joseph Fox. She offered to give up the shield number right then and there. But Chief Fox explained that that wasn’t the case.

Fox and Titus have something in common, aside from the fact that she wears his father’s old shield number. Titus, who left the transit bureau and is now assigned to the NYPD’s Risk Management Bureau, also comes from a family of service. 

While she doesn’t have any relatives in the NYPD, Titus, who is Catholic and grew up in Valley Cottage, New York, does come from a military family.

“I graduated from high school when Sept. 11 happened and was intending to go to a military academy because of what was going on in the world,” she recalled.

Her family recommended that instead, she attend college and then see if the military was still her goal after graduation. She wound up joining the NYPD a decade after 9/11 — fulfilling her dream of serving. 

For Titus, there is another coincidence pertaining to the shield number aside from the Fox connection. “The number 10956 is the zip code of New City, the town next to the one I grew up in,” she said. 

“It’s funny how that number keeps following me around,” she mused.