He's a millionaire who runs strip clubs across the US. He's also a Centreville cop.

Mike Ocello lives in a $1.2 million house, drives a $120,000 Jaguar, worked as a male dancer in his youth and heads a company with cabarets and topless clubs in eight states. He spends his work days surrounded by mostly naked women.

But about once a week, the 58-year-old executive puts on a police officer's uniform, buckles a gun belt around his waist and drives from his headquarters near his firm's Diamond Cabaret in Sauget to the Centreville Police Department. During stints on the department's night shift, he becomes Patrolman Ocello, a $10-an-hour cop in one of the poorest communities in the country, and one of the most violent in Illinois. He donates what he earns back to the impoverished community.

Ocello is the chief operating officer of International Entertainment Consultants, the group that runs strip clubs including Diamond Cabaret and the Country Rock Cafe in Sauget, PT's Show Club in Centreville and Roxy's in Brooklyn. The company operates 15 clubs nationwide.

Ocello began his police career at the Brooklyn Police Department more than a decade ago because he said he wanted to make a real difference in the community.

One night two years ago, he recalled, Ocello stopped his squad car at a stop sign and, to his surprise, a van peeled out right in front of him and fish-tailed down the street. He hit his flashing lights and pulled over the driver.

And that's when he had a chance to make a difference, a life-or-death difference in this case. The driver got out of the van, stopped beside his vehicle and began fumbling around in his waistband, ignoring Ocello's shouts to raise his hands over his head. In the dark, Ocello thought the driver was reaching for a gun.

"Show me your hands! Show me your hands!" Ocello yelled, but the man kept reaching for something.

"My finger was on the trigger. I've got to tell you, it was close. Real close. But he finally threw his arms up, and I could see what he was holding. It was a cellphone."

Why didn't he shoot?

"I don't know. It would have been justified. But police officers are supposed to save lives. Not take them."

Ocello's path to holding the honorary title of the metro-east's topless club king began when he was just 18. He crashed his car in Utah when he hit a patch of black ice while driving with a skiing buddy in the passenger seat. Ocello went off the road and into a frightening skid and then over an embankment.

During the Greyhound bus ride back to St. Louis, Ocello knew he needed to change his life. During his first semester of freshman year at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, he said he learned how to drink and play a better game of foosball. The crash, he said, told him that he wanted more.

He left college and joined the Army, hoping to become an Airborne Ranger.

"I wanted to be a commando and fight evil," Ocello said.

He excelled during training and was made a squad leader. Ocello was then offered the opportunity to attend West Point after first enrolling in the military's prep school, designed to prepare cadets for the academic rigors of "The Point." He attended two years at the academy, which did not obligate him to further service, and was working at an uncle's tool-and-die shop when his cousin called about a job.

It was performing as a male stripper. The cousin was already working as a dancer.

"He said it would be fun. It was a hoot. ... I said 'Why not?'"

His then-girlfriend Laura didn't think it was a hoot. They broke up.

Ocello, who was in his 20s, began dancing at PT's in Centreville, a club that he would eventually manage. He said that since that time decades ago, a rumor has persisted in the community that his dancing name was "Sparkles."

"Do I look like a freaking Sparkles to you?" he asked contemptuously. He said he danced under his given name of "Micheal," spelling it with a twist.

The strip club dancing ignited something in Ocello that led to his true calling: being an executive. He was invited to Denver, the headquarters of PT's, got a low-level director's job, and worked his way up. He got the Jaguar; the million-dollar house in Creve Couer, Missouri. He got the girl, too. Laura and Ocello reunited. They have been together for 38 years, married for 27, and have three children and four grandchildren.

And he has satisfied his desire to "become a commando and fight evil" with the night shift in Centreville.

He has taken training far above the calling of a patrolman. His training included going to the police academy in Peoria at his own expense, and a 90-hour course with the South Side Chicago Emergency Response Team. He is also a trained firearms instructor and serves in that capacity for Centreville.

As for his years in the community, Ocello said, "A police officer's best weapon is his mouth," meaning the ability to defuse potential violence with reasoning.

Ocello also is the founder of Club Operators Against Sex Trafficking, or COAST, and said the group has trained 15,000 club employees about the dangers of sex-trafficking. He said the organization warns club workers against would-be pimps who might pose as an ordinary customer. The FBI has sometimes sought advice from the group's members, Ocello said.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, also known as ICE, has praised the group founded by Ocello. In a press release, ICE Special Agent Bill Williger, who participates in outreach events to educate audiences about human trafficking, said that "COAST members are legitimate business owners who want to protect their brand and keep their employees safe." ICE Supervisory Special Agent Dwayne Angebrandt added that COAST "is taking a stand to tell potential traffickers, 'not in my club; not on my watch.'"

Ocello's office is just down a sidewalk from the girls dancing at the Diamond Cabaret. The chocolate-brown walls are decorated with a picture of Ocello with U.S. President Barack Obama, a picture of Ocello ringing the bell at the NASDAQ on Wall Street when his corporation went public, World War I enlistment posters and a signed and numbered print of Dr. Seuss titled "The Booby Trap."

Former Centreville Police Chief Curtis McCall had left the department to become Centreville Township Supervisor by the time Ocello became a village officer. However, one day McCall said he looked out his front window in the Golden Gardens neighborhood, and saw Ocello helping an elderly woman who had run out of gas.

"I don't know if he bought the gas or had it with him," McCall said, "but he was helping her."

Ocello tries not to get involved with police calls to his clubs, he said, but sometimes it can't be avoided. Not long ago, he responded to PT's and found one of his employees, "acting like an (expletive)." The guy didn't recognize Ocello, who was wearing his police uniform, and continued his obnoxious ways.

"He didn't recognize me until it was too late, after I fired him," Ocello said.

Earlier this month, Ocello's day job led him to meet with a celebrity of the moment, Stormy Daniels, who has alleged she had an affair with President Donald Trump and is embroiled in a very public legal battle with Trump's attorney, Michael Cohen.

With all the recent publicity, Ocello expected Daniels, a stripper and adult film star, to have a big ego, but Ocello said he was pleasantly surprised that Daniels was very nice, and he told her so.

"She said, 'You treated me well. You paid me well. Why wouldn't I be nice?'" Ocello said.

Daniels appeared for a two-night gig at the Country Rock Cafe. Ocello asked her to sign former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's book "Understanding Trump." Daniels' signature is beneath Gingrich's. The "i" in Daniels is dotted with a heart.

This story was originally published June 22, 2018 at 11:53 AM with the headline "He's a millionaire who runs strip clubs across the US. He's also a Centreville cop.."