Steve Sorocko retired in one piece, a laudable feat for any big-city cop with 41 years on the job but especially for one who spent most of it on the bomb and arson squad.
It was decades of pipe bombs, fire-for-profit schemes and grisly deaths by the hundreds.
But nothing matched the early 1980s, when an underworld feud within the so-called Syrian organized crime family here exploded — literally and figuratively.
In arguably the most dramatic moment, Jimmy Michaels Sr., patriarch of the clan, was killed when a remote-control bomb ripped apart his car as he drove along Interstate 55 in south St. Louis County. The brazen act triggered a series of retaliatory acts that included two more car bombings.
