Sgt. Don Anderson’s career includes good, bad and ugly calls

County sheriff’s Sgt. Don Anderson planned to be “out there” working one more shift Wednesday night before he turns in his equipment today and officially retires after working for the department since February of 1983.

Today, March 31, also marks Anderson’s 65th birthday.

Although he enjoys working with the “good bunch” who serve in the sheriff’s office, Anderson has been aiming at retirement for the last couple of years. Preparations have included a move to Lewiston from the LaCrosse area where he and wife Lindy enjoyed their rural life style on Mud Flat Road for 14 years.

The key reason for the move to the valley was to locate near family members for family activities.

With 28 years of service here, Anderson ranks as senior man in the department. His long service here follows 14 years of duty for the police department in El Paso, Texas.

Anderson said police work at El Paso and life in general could be tough, and one day he and Lindy decided to load up their young family and leave. Essentially, they decided to move west, some place with hunting and fishing opportunities.

They landed in the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley and Anderson went looking for another job in police work and was hired by then Whitman County Sheriff Cleve Hunter in 1983.

“At first, I just couldn’t get used to the cold,” Anderson said. The winter snows and long stretches of Whitman County roads, particularly at night, were a big change from the hot streets of El Paso where he had worked in the vice and street crimes division.

Over the years he’s found himself in total whiteout conditions, many times while covering the miles of road to respond to calls for help.

One of his worst winter episodes was logged when he put a patrol car into a snow drift off Highway 271 north of Oakesdale.

“It went in so deep that even the dome light was buried. It was still going around under the snow,” Anderson noted.

A measure of the time and miles deputies cover shows on Anderson’s last patrol vehicle, a 2007 Trailblazer that now has more than 121,000 miles on its odometer.

Anderson was promoted to sergeant in 1987 and promoted again to undersheriff in 1999 by Sheriff Steve Tomson. After Tomson was challenged and defeated by Brett Myers in the 2002 primary election, Anderson returned to his civil service rank of sergeant.

Anderson has received many citations and awards, some of them linked to the top crime headlines in Whitman County. He’s also seen his share of tedious assignments and responses to cases, like child abuse, on the uglier end of the crime spectrum.

In 1990 he received a medal of valor for his work in that year’s Apple Cup bomb incident at Pullman. Anderson was called to disarm the device because he was the lone lawman on hand with that kind of experience, one of skills he learned in El Paso.

“Actually, it wasn’t a bomb. It was intended to be a hoax, but the way the guy had rigged it up, it was dangerous,” Anderson explained.

He was also one of the lineup of officers called out in 1998 to counter what became known as the WSU riots, an episode in which college students and others got out of control in the last days of the spring term.

“Everybody who was available got called out on that one, and just about everybody got hurt in one way or another,” he noted.

He received a medal of merit for riot duty and a City of Pullman medal of valor.

Anderson received another medal of merit in 2001 for his work as financial manager for the Quad Cities Drug Task Force, a combination unit which has played a big role in countering the drug culture in this corner of the state. He also received a distinguished public service award in 2002 for his early work on Whitcom, the communications center at Pullman which has become another major addition for police work on the Palouse.

During his service in El Paso, Anderson received two life saving awards, one for rescuing an accident victim from the Rio Grande River and one for pulling two youngsters out of a burning car.

Anderson can also recount duty tales which did not include a citation or recognition.

For example, there was the time the department had to cover the loss of a Charlais bull.

Anderson explained he arrived at the scene of a rollover accident at the end of the Penawawa Road and found an elderly couple hanging upside down in their seat belts. After determining they were uninjured, Anderson asked why they were not scrambling to get out. They suggested the deputy check out his backside. Anderson turned around and faced the agitated bull.

“I had to run back to my car and get a gun. He got pretty close,” Anderson said.

During the years he and Lindy resided on Mud Flat Road, Anderson became a sort of unofficial deputy for the western expanse of Whitman County. Many times, residents out west opted to bypass the 911 system and just “contact Don.”

Anderson however, credits residents of the county’s small towns with the start of a lot of investigations which eventually led to convictions.

“A lot of the suspects are people who decide to move to these small towns because of the low cost of living. What they don’t realize is that when they move into one of our towns, they are being watched. When people see unusual things happening, they let us know,” Anderson explained.

The Andersons, who met when they were in high school at Roswell, N.M., plan to spend more time with their son and daughter and families. Son Don, now an Asotin County sheriff’s officer, and daughter Tammy Taulbee, are Clarkston High School grads who have remained in the valley. The Andersons have three grandchildren.