By Joelyn Hansen
Idaho Falls Post Register
DUBOIS, Idaho — Retired Clark County Sheriff Craig King was the definition of a working lawman.
Ask those who know or have worked with King and they’ll tell you he’s not the type of person to sit behind a desk pushing papers. His place was in the middle of the action, making arrests, investigating cases and out with a search party looking for a missing person in the backcountry.
King, who retired from the sheriff’s office after 34 years in law enforcement at the end of July, said being a hands-on sheriff was inevitable in a small department. The sheriff’s office has only the sheriff and two deputies to oversee slightly more than 1,000 residents spread over 1,764 square miles.
Looking back at the improvements in the department since he started in 1980, King leaves knowing he did a job well done.
“I don’t know how (King) did it,” Jefferson County Sheriff Blair Olsen said. “He was definitely burning the candle at both ends. He truly was a working sheriff.”
When King was first hired on as a deputy, the Clark “sheriff’s office” consisted of him and the sheriff. King’s “patrol cruiser” was a pickup truck with two-wheel drive, and he toted a gun he was asked to purchase at his own expense.
Clark’s 911 dispatch center wasn’t manned around the clock, which meant that calls rang into the sheriff’s home during its off-hours.
All of that has changed, King said.
King, who was elected sheriff in 1988 and took office in 1989, worked to ensure that the county sheriff’s office remained viable - even if it meant stretching and searching for every dollar available.
“It’s tough for a little county like Clark County to keep up and stay current,” King said. “Every job has its good days and bad days. We try to keep the bad days to a minimum.”
One of King’s career highlights came in 1995 when he secured a competitive grant to hire a second deputy.
The COPS grant, geared toward helping state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies increase their community policing capacity, paid the salary and benefits of the officer for three years, enough time for the county to find money to fund the position.
In 2003, the county used a homeland security grant to start up an enhanced 911 system. The dispatch center, now staffed at all hours, is now able to trace calls to any county address. King said the next step will be to track cell phone calls when money is made available.
The center is operated with the $700 revenue from the county’s 911 surcharge fees. Walker said he was among the Idaho sheriffs who lobbied the Legislature in recent years to add a 25-cent surcharge increase to help smaller counties maintain their centers.
Clark County Commissioners Greg Shenton and Bill Fredericksen said King worked with what money was available and didn’t get discouraged when money wasn’t there.
“Craig was always pretty conservative and ran a tight ship with the money he had,” Shenton said.
Walker has also been heavily involved in the Tri-County Sheriff’s Association and the Idaho Sheriff’s Association, giving Clark both a voice in state and regional law enforcement and giving Walker the ability to support colleagues in other counties.
“It’s one of those deals where the small counties can give back and not always be the receivers,” King said.
And though Clark County has tried to stay as updated as possible, King said that on occasion, he and his deputies utilized Old West tactics with a modern-day twist.
On one case, he and his deputies tracked a couple of men in the Kilgore area who had stolen a pickup truck in Missouri.
“It was an Old Western deal, but instead of horses we were on snowmobiles,” King said.
He and the deputies found the men several hours later in a building. King said the surprise arrival could have turned into a shootout, but luckily, the men had just taken apart their guns to clean them.
King said his tenure as sheriff was always marked by widespread community support. On another occasion, King recalled, nearly 80 people came out with horses to help the sheriff’s office comb a large area in the backcountry for a missing man.
“Eastern Idaho has always been impressive,"" King said. “They come together when you really need them.”
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