Lloyd Evans: The Lifelong Resident Stuck With The Town When There Wasn’t Much Hope
By Christopher Smart, The Salt Lake Tribune (Utah)
PARK CITY, Utah - There’s not a lot of quit in Lloyd Evans.
Park City’s police chief is an animated Disney bear of a guy who, like his hometown, is as easy as a summer mountain breeze and as tough as the rock-busting miners who founded the place.
During the hardscrabble years of the late 1960s and early ‘70s - as the silver mines were shutting down and the fledgling ski resort went into receivership - folks were packing up and walking away from houses that no longer held value.
Not Lloyd Evans.
He hustled odd jobs so he could hang on and stay put. He punched tickets at the ski lifts, schlepped coffee and ran errands. He even piloted the now-defunct Spiro Tunnel train ride for tourists.
“I saw so many of my friends leave Park City because there was nothing for them here,” he recalls. “It was tough to live in a town where you couldn’t make a living.”
That was then. Today, that tiny burg is a teeming destination resort. Not everyone who wants to live in Park City can afford the rent. After 51 years here - 27 of them as a cop and seven as chief - Evans can ruminate on the dynamics of this ever-changing place and his career, which will wind down three years hence.
As the ‘70s came to an end, Evans signed up with the town’s tiny police force - partly because few would but mostly because he needed a steady income for his growing family.
“More than anything, for me, it was a way of staying in Park City. We didn’t have many benefits. But one thing was certain, it was a job that would exist beyond the year. And I thought being a small-town cop would be kind of cool.”
As any Park City miner or ski bum will tell you, some things don’t change. “Park City was always a hard chargin’ party town,” Evans says. “I remember when I first joined the force and the Cozy [saloon] and Alamo [bar] were hoppin’. I got my butt kicked there a couple of times trying to break up fights.”
The wild boom years of the ‘80s saw Deer Valley open while many longtime Parkites sold their property for handsome profits and skedaddled. But Evans stuck to his mountain roots. Tourism was thriving and so was cocaine trafficking and the violence it breeds.
“The town was growing and the resort was booming,” Evans remembers. “We were moving away from the small-town thing but we were beginning to see some real bad-ass crime.”
Park City’s landmarks were torched - first the Coalition Building in July 1981 and then the Union Pacific Depot in April 1985. Evans probed those arsons and later, with former Police Chief Frank Bell, investigated the murders of an airline pilot and a housewife. The killings, along with the fires, ushered in a new era that changed Park City forever.
When Fred Duncan was shot in his Woodside Avenue home in August 1984, it was a shock, says Bell, who now lives in Crested Butte, Colo. The pilot, it turned out, was a cocaine mule who was gunned down by a drug dealer as he watched TV with a girlfriend.
And, in February 1990, Nadalee Noble, a 42-year-old mother of three who had taken a job at a Park City sporting-goods store, was shot point-blank in front of Albertson’s by her estranged husband, Don Noble.
Residents were stunned. Drug violence and domestic abuse were spilling into the street, gruesome evidence of a new boom era that, like the old mining days, included get-rich-quick artists.
During the 1980s, Park City had become a “real place that suffered from the same problems that faced the rest of the country,” Bell explains. “As a Police Department, we had to wake up to big-city crime. Lloyd had to mature right along with the town.”
By the ‘90s, Park City had completed its transformation to world-class destination. But the evolution from friendly mountain town to upscale retreat wasn’t without pain, says Tom Clyde, former city attorney.
“For many people, it became a town they couldn’t adapt to. But Lloyd seems comfortable with it - whether he’s getting screamed at from a guy who owns a $10 million house in Deer Valley or helping members of the Hispanic community adjust to their new home in low-income housing. He’s pretty much willing to help everyone.”
For his part, Evans says he can roll with the punches because Park City always has been in transition.
“I didn’t ever say, ‘OK, man, it’s so sad the city is changing,’” he says. “Because the alternative was for it to go away. This place could have been just another ghost town of the West.”
It’s his casual and warm nature that keep most residents from seeing Evans as just a cop, says Nan Chalat-Noaker, editor of the Park Record newspaper.
“I think of him as a community person who you would go to when you needed someone to check up on a senior [citizen] you were worried about,” she said. “He’s the best kind of community policeman you could have, because he’s like your neighbor.”
Evans has survived the bad times and relished the good ones - particularly community celebrations that spotlight the town’s colorful past. He took part in Park City’s centennial and even ran the Olympic torch into the hometown he refused to leave.
“I have a real fun photo of Lloyd and his daughter dressed up in old-time clothes driving around in a horse-drawn buggy,” Chalat-Noaker says. “One Christmas he dressed up as Santa, and he’s perfect for it because he has such a great face and smile.”
He’s easygoing, all right, says Bell, but it isn’t wise to give him short shrift. “Lloyd is laid back like a fox,” the former chief says. “Some people tend to underestimate him. But he’s bright and articulate and isn’t to be underestimated.”
On one occasion, the two were transporting a violent prisoner to California’s Folsom Prison. “The guy said, ‘I’ve got a weapon on me.’ And before he could finish the sentence, Lloyd had a gun in his ear. The guy was screaming and I was swerving all over the freeway. Later, I told Lloyd, ‘I’m glad you didn’t shoot that guy. I don’t know how we would have explained it to the rental-car agency.’ ”
In 1997 - a time when all of Park City’s executives were being hired from outside, products of national searches - Lloyd Evans was promoted from within to oversee a department that has grown to 27 officers strong. It’s a credit to his staying power and quiet brand of charisma, locals say.
“He loves the community so much,” Bell says. “He once told me he always wanted to end his career as police chief in Park City.”