HELLO, OCALA: Meet Your Neighbor—Frank Iervolino

Frank Iervolino poses with his U.S. Navy helmet from the Vietnam War era in a room filled with his memorabilia at his home in Del Webb’s Stone Creek in Ocala, Fla. on Monday, March 10, 2025. Iervolino is currently a member of the Marion County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette] 2025.

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Posted March 18, 2025 | By Eadie Sickler, Special to the Gazette

Despite being the Marion County Sheriff’s Office Cold Case Unit’s newest member, Frank Iervolino has an impressive history in civilian and military operations in the United States and internationally.

Iervolino admittedly, however, was not a “good” student in grade school nor his high school years.

“That is one thing that I regret,” he shared.

He was born in Brooklyn, New York, and, after graduating from high school, worked for a telephone company. A fellow employee impressed upon him to enlist into the U.S. Navy where he could decide to be a seaman or an airman. He chose the airman path.

Flying as a crewman in combat support missions in Vietnam, at 21 years old, he began to think of what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.

“It was either the height of optimism or the delusion of a madman,” he quipped, “but I decided I wanted to be an attorney.”

After active duty, he remained in the Naval Reserves and enrolled at Kingsboro Community College, then proceeded to Baruch University in New York, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration.

In 1975, Iervolino was hired by the United States Department of the Treasury, Internal Revenue Service, as a strike force agent in the investigation and prosecution of organized crime senior leadership and associates in New York city.

While working for the treasury department, Iervolino earned his law degree from Brooklyn Law School, then a Master of Law degree from New York University.

In 1984, he became an assistant district attorney in Kings County in Brooklyn, in the Organized Crime and Rackets Bureau, again in the areas of organized crime and political corruption within New York state.

He has been a deputy attorney general with the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice and, following that, a criminal defense/tax attorney specializing in all areas of criminal defense and tax litigation. From 1995 to 2007, he was a senior trial attorney in New York, specializing in trials involving large multinational corporations.

While still employed in his civilian law practice, he also served in the Naval Reserves. From 1988 to 2006, he was a Reserve Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) Officer Special Agent (commander). During that time, he conducted more than 25 short term (30 to 90 days) operations throughout Asia, Central America, Europe and the Middle East. Iervolino tells of “conducting homicide investigations in Iraq as well as searching for Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.”

He was activated for Operation Desert Storm, Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

In the 2007-to-2012-time frame, he began working for the Defense Intelligence Agency and was located at Camp Smith, Hawaii. He was a liaison to the FBI Counter Terrorism Task Force, with top secret clearance. His scope included south and southeast Asia (Australia, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand). He was a counterintelligence and counterterror operations officer in those countries. In 2011, Iervolino worked as a DIA counterintelligence officer in Afghanistan for special operations task force, comprised of a Navy SEAL team and Army special warfare group.

One of the most personally challenging assignments of his career, Iervolino said, was when he was assigned to Sicily, Italy. At the time, he explained, the Mafia was very strong in that area, and he was involved with a Carabinieri/NCIS operation to expose and incarcerate those involved in drug deals.

During all of this time, Iervolino’s wife, Catherine “Cathy,” and their two daughters, were keeping the home-fires burning.

“I don’t know much of what he was involved in,” she said. “Most of it was top secret, and I was not privileged to know where he was, or how long he would be there, or what he was doing. I’m still not sure I want to know.”

Cathy, also from Brooklyn, is a graduate of Kingsboro Community College and St. Francis College, where she earned her Bachelor of Business Administration degree. She was an account manager for IKG Industries in New Jersey.

When Frank was in Hawaii, Cathy was able to visit him there and enjoyed it.

“Most of the time, I stayed home. We have two daughters and a home, and I had a career of my own,” she said.
About not knowing of her husband’s whereabouts most of the time and living with that knowledge every day, Cathy shared, “If I came home from work and there was not a military car waiting in my driveway, it was a good day.”

The couple’s daughter Catherine lives in New Jersey with her husband Keith and their two children, Catherine and Thomas. Their youngest daughter, Cara, lives in Clearwater.

“I never wanted to live in Florida,” Cathy said, as Frank had suggested. “But one very snowy New Jersey winter, after the children had grown and began their own lives, I was shoveling snow and said, ‘Okay, let’s think about Florida,’”

The retired couple enjoy the amenities in the southwest Ocala development of Stone Creek. Cathy loves to play pickleball and enjoys line dancing. In addition to volunteering with the Cold Case Unit, Frank also serves as an advocate with the Veterans’ Court of the Marion County 5th Circuit Court and is a member of VFW Post 4781 in Ocala and the National Criminal Investigative Service Association for retired NCIS agents.