Captain Wood to retire after 47-year career in law enforcement

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Fresh out of high school in 1974, a young Dave Wood took a job as a dispatcher with the Seward County Sheriff’s Office. Forty-seven years later, almost to the day, Captain Dave Wood will retire Jan. 3, 2022.

“All my years have been in Seward County,” Wood said, noting that it’s unusual for someone in law enforcement to work in the same place their entire career.

He applied for his first position as a dispatcher under Sheriff Marvin Pollock, who served the county from 1963 to 1983. Pollock later became Wood’s father-in-law when he and his wife, Annette, were married. They just celebrated their 46th wedding anniversary.

Back then, the dispatch center and sheriff’s office were on the first floor of the courthouse.

“We didn’t have the equipment we have today. There were no computers,” Wood said. “The closest thing we had was a teletype, which we got six months after I started.”

Technology continued to evolve over Wood’s nearly five decades in the office, but the job itself hasn’t changed much.

“It’s like buying a coat. Maybe the first one had buttons and the next one has a zipper, but the principal is still there,” Wood said.

He spent four years dispatching deputies to emergency calls before taking to the road as a deputy sheriff with the newly formed night shift in 1978.

“I was the start of the sixth deputy position,” Wood said, “and now we’re at about 20.”

Wood attended the law enforcement training academy in Grand Island. His position was initially funded through the Nebraska Highway Safety Office, which paid his salary for the first year before the position was absorbed into the county budget.

He was promoted to sergeant in 1981, and in 1983, Wood moved to the day shift and began handling everything related to civil process: collecting delinquent taxes, serving warrants and summonses, and processing fees that come through the sheriff’s office. He also worked with juveniles in holding and extraditions (arranging for transport of those facing court cases in another jurisdiction).

When Wood first started in civil process, he was responsible for serving 95% of the paperwork related to lawsuits and court orders.

“Through the late 80s and 90s, when the economy was bad, there was a lot more paper service, when people didn’t have the money to pay and there were a lot of civil lawsuits to collect,” he said. “That dropped off somewhat over the years.”

At one point, Wood said, the department averaged 250 civil process services a month. Now, it averages 130.

When the Justice Center opened and Sheriff Mike Vance took office, he added court security to Wood’s list of responsibilities.

“I’ve always had a lot of respect for Dave,” Vance said. “He’s a well-liked person. He knows just about everybody.”

After 40 years of civil process work, Wood has become Nebraska’s expert on the subject. He has taught classes for 15 years, training employees from other departments around the state in civil process work.

“There is no college course that teaches attorneys or court staff or law enforcement this stuff. They tell you where the statutes are, but they never teach how it should be accomplished to fulfill the statute,” Wood said. “That’s where I come in.”

He receives two to three calls a week from other sheriff’s departments in Nebraska asking how to handle certain types of paperwork.

The statutes related to civil process, Wood said, require everything to be done within a specific time frame – whether that’s 10 days or three days.

“It’s not just whenever you get around to it,” he said.

Because of such specific timetables, Wood has rarely taken more than a week’s vacation at a time – not since the 1980s.

“Somebody needs to be here to keep it flowing. If not, there are fines or penalties (for the department),” he said.

Wood said he won’t miss being on that stringent timetable, and he’s ready to pass on the audit preparations to someone else.

“This is my 40th audit,” he said. “There’s a few things that I won’t miss, and that’s probably one of them.”

Wood has spent the past year training two colleagues, Deputy Jordan Legband and Investigator Lisa Borges, who will split his civil process duties for the time being.

Vance said Deputy Tim Huntington, who has been with the department part-time for 14 years, will soon become the new full-time administrative captain in Wood’s place.

Wood, Legband and Borges also are in the process of transferring a standalone computer filing system Wood built in 1995 to a new system that’s compatible with other departments in the area.

“It hooks in with law enforcement agencies in Butler County, York County and Saline County,” Wood said. “Everybody’s chipped in to pay for the program, and we’re in full swing on it.”

Wood hasn’t hashed out his post-retirement plans quite yet. He hopes to do some work around the house, maybe travel a bit and spend time with his children and grandchildren.

“I wish him luck. I think he’s going to be bored,” Vance said. “He’s been dedicated to the county for a long time.”