The young Ferguson, Mo., cop and father of two girls who was left fighting for his life when he was violently shoved during protests on the 10th anniversary of the fatal shooting of Michael Brown has an “infectious smile” and ambition that quickly boosted him through the ranks, his former chief told The Post.

Travis Brown, a 36-year-old father, previously worked for the St. Louis County Police Department, where he served under former Chief of Police Tim Fitch beginning in 2012.

“He was with me ’til I retired in 2014,” Fitch said. “I hired him.”

“I remember well when I was commissioning him and having given his oath of office, he had a family member pin his badge on. I just remember the big smile on his face, and I thought, ‘Boy, this guy’s got one of those contagious kind of smiles,'” Fitch said.

That family is now holding a vigil by Brown’s bedside as he fights for his life after he was viciously shoved to the ground by an unruly demonstrator Friday, on the 10th anniversary of the killing of unarmed black teen Michael Brown in Ferguson.

Four days later, Travis Brown remains in critical condition at a Missouri hospital with a severe brain injury he sustained in the assault.

“There’s a lot of raw emotion about whether or not he’s going to be able to beat this and survive. And if he does, is he going to ever be able to come back to work?” Fitch told The Post after joining Ferguson police and community leaders for an emotional press conference Tuesday.

“He was very ambitious. It didn’t take him long to get into a specialized unit. He was in a couple,” Fitch said, recalling how Brown was assigned to St. Louis County’s special response team shortly after joining the force.

“Then he went from there to the SWAT team that we call tactical operations.“

Brown served with St. Louis County until January, when he joined the Ferguson Police Department — which has rallied around their injured officer.

“They’re handling it as well as can be expected. There’s still a lot of hugging,” Fitch said of Tuesday’s press conference. “I know some of them had tears running down their face.”

During the conference, an impassioned Ferguson Police Chief Troy Doyle released graphic footage of the assault, which showed Brown’s head slamming into a concrete sidewalk after he was charged by 28-year-old suspect Elijah Gant.

“This guy tackled my guy like he’s a football player,” said Doyle, who previously lambasted the demonstrators for treating the department like “a punching bag” since the 2014 Michael Brown killing — even though the department’s staff has been almost entirely replaced since then and is now more than half black.

Fitch, who worked with Doyle in St. Louis County for 30 years before his appointment to lead Ferguson in 2023, described the chief as “made for” navigating the current situation.

“Whenever I had a tough assignment I needed somebody to handle, I put Troy Doyle in charge of it,” Fitch said. “He knew exactly what needed to be done and he did it with passion.”

“I thought we were past all of this until this happened over the weekend,” the former chief said of violence in Ferguson. “I really thought we were past the violent part of this.”