Classmate spotlight...

He grew up on Willry Street just off Amboy Avenue, just a few summer steps away from our favorite Stewart’s hot dog stand. Matt Sautner attended St. James followed by several of the public school grades culminating with graduation in 1970. Rider was his college of choice. After obtaining his degree from Rider he went into law enforcement with the New Jersey State Police for eight years. For most of us that would be a career position, but not for this ambitious individual. His career years that followed were the makings that would make any parent proud, not to mention his fellow WHS alumni.

Matt became a member of the United States federal law enforcement agency that we know as the Secret Service. To listen to this confident yet humble individual, most of the years were mundane. Afford us the courtesy to politely disagree Matt.

We think of the Secret Service as strictly personnel assigned to protecting the President and their families along with national leaders from both home and abroad. The agency was designed having two distinct areas of responsibility...one a treasury role and the other, protective. Today the agency’s primary investigative mission is to safeguard the payment and financial systems of the United States.

During Matt’s career with the Secret Service his roles covered many of those bases. He was the lead agent for the New York Stock Exchange, not to mention taking on the role of lead protective agent in charge of JFK Jr’s funeral in NYC. Working out of the Washington D.C. Headquarters Matt’s assignment was the Intelligence Division. One of his responsibilities was protective intelligence for Presidential foreign trips. In addition to providing Presidential protection this involved Matt and his team making trips home and abroad in advance of the scheduled Presidential appearances to work with those foreign counterparts to secure the safety of the President and entourage. One particular assignment involved President Reagan’s trip to China. The first trip to that country since Nixon’s historic journey. Matt’s role dictated his involvement in subsequent trips around the world by Presidents’ Bush, Clinton and Bush Jr. Ironically, one assignment in 1995 required Matt to do the advance protective intelligence along with accompanying President Clinton on his visit to our very own Woodbridge High School. For Matt, the added value that day was having his daughter Susan in the audience as a WHS student at the time. When Matt retired from the USSS in 2004 he was assigned to Headquarters, Financial Crimes Division, Assistant to the Special Agent in Charge.

Today Matt and his beautiful wife Mary Lou reside in Scottsdale, AZ where he wears one more federal agency hat...that as an agent for the United States Food & Drug Administration Office of Criminal Investigations.

He takes a great deal of pride in his two children, Susan and Michael, who both have gone onto impressive careers of their own. In his free time, Matt and Mary Lou travel and always find time to play the great golf courses the Scottsdale area offers up.

From Willry Street to Scottsdale and all in between, Matt, your fellow classmates tip their hat to you and your impressive accomplishments.