Q&A: Retiring officer talks life on the job

CLOVIS — Three days after his Aug. 1 retirement from 35 years in law enforcement, Mike Reeves sat for an interview in the building of the newspaper where, as a high schooler, he developed pictures as well as a deeper interest in the work of the first responders he photographed. In his hands he gripped a carefully folded small paper bearing both the brand of the Curry County Sheriff Office and his own note, of a month and year significant to his career: August 2008. That's when Reeves helped save the life of a toddler in Clovis choking on a hair barrette; at that time he was a "new nurse," and ten years later he departs one career for another, in the medical field.

Born and raised in Clovis, Reeves said he was inspired as a child by both occupations and that "it was time" at last to put his newly-acquired nursing credentials to use. He started with the Clovis Police Department in 1983 and first joined the CCSO ten years later, with punctuated short intervals that included a year in the mid-2000s at nursing school and with ancillary staff at Plains Regional Medical Center. He held a number of positions in law enforcement, most recently as Undersheriff since the first of the year 2015.

Sheriff Wesley Waller said Reeves' family in law enforcement will miss his leadership, expertise and personality.

"Mike enjoyed many accomplishments and successes during his career, and was witness to many tragedies as well. He was a part of the initial group of deputies and officers that entered the Clovis-Carver Library on August 28, 2017 moments after the mass-shooting. He was awarded a citation for valor for his courageous acts during that tragedy," Waller wrote in a message to The News. "It has been a pleasure to work with Mike and an honor to call him a friend."

In a talk with The News, Reeves shared some of the standout moments and perspectives from a career that included undercover work with the FBI, disruption of a drug cartel stretching to California and Mexico, and, more recently, the deadly mass shooting Aug. 28, 2017 at the Clovis-Carver Public Library.

"Don't make me sound too sappy," he said. "It's emotional to talk about some of it."

What drew you to a career in law enforcement?

I guess I always wanted to be in law enforcement — in my kindergarten picture, I insisted on wearing a badge. But I got interested in this line of work through working at the News Journal (now The Eastern New Mexico News). When I was like 13, 14 years old, I took pictures of sporting events for the school annual at Gattis Junior High and I was bringing pictures of the events to the News Journal and they were publishing them regularly. Then, I don't recall how it exactly happened, but (former editor) Bill Southard took an interest in me and offered me a job developing pictures — dark room work. And I was interested in the police and firefighter stuff, so I would go to scenes and take pictures. Back then there were a lot more photographs in the newspaper of crashes and things like that. I would work here on Saturdays, all day long, developing whatever pictures people needed developed.

It got me enamored with police and firefighter stuff, so I ended up taking a job through a school work program when I was 16 as a dispatcher at the police department. I did that until I was probably almost 19, and was hired to work as a patrolman for the Clovis PD. Of course, you can't be a patrolman or police officer now till you're 21, and there's a lot of good reasons for that (laughs). But it worked out for me, and I've basically been in law enforcement ever since.

How does it feel to change careers now?

The retirement was kind of a melancholy day for me, because I love the brotherhood and I will continue to. It feels strange to not be in law enforcement anymore, but it's another chapter in my life that I've been preparing for for years. I think I got my RN about 10 years ago, and last month I finished my baccalaureate degree in nursing, and all with this plan in mind. At my age it's odd to have a new career, but it's all service. The law enforcement has been service, the nursing is going to be service. Sometimes you are faced with possibly having to take a life in one career field, and then trying to preserve it as much as you can in the other. What I've always tried to do - and I've succeeded some and I've failed some - is to try to always glorify God. Some days I make it, some days I don't.

What interested you in nursing?

When I was 11 I was struck by a car, and I was in the hospital for an extended period of time - altogether a couple months. During that time I was bedridden and I had extraordinary experiences with the nurses that were taking care of me. It made an impact on me. And medicine is intriguing; the technical or science side of it intrigues me, and the service side of it intrigues me. It's an area where you can really make in impact in people's lives if your heart is in the right place. A positive impact.

How has your medical training in recent years influenced your work in law enforcement here?

It gives a unique perspective because, from my perspective, I have to see people on a level playing field, and being a nurse helped me to see everyone on a level playing field, not as a criminal but as a person. What I always had to keep in the back of my mind, regardless of the diversity of the situation, is that you have to look at everybody as one of God's children - difficult as it may be sometimes.

What have been some of the most rewarding or challenging moments in your career?

There are many, but there are two medals I received that represent one of the brightest and one of the darkest days in my career. (long pause)

The life-saving medal from August of 2008 was when I helped a baby girl that was choking, and she ended up surviving from the choking incident. I was a new nurse at the time and just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I could feel her life slipping away in my arms, and when we finally cleared that choking it was such a relief.

That was one of the two scariest days of my life. The other one was the library shooting. I never expected, here, to have to go to something like that. We prepared for it, and we showed ourselves to be very prepared for it. But still, it became very real - it wasn't training anymore. This was happening. And it makes me very sad that something like that happened in our community. There have been positive things that have come out of it, law enforcement-wise. I think first-responders are all closer because of it. But it was just a dark day for this community.

But there are many happy memories also, I mean I loved my job the entire time I did it. But the memorable things, a lot of them, they do strike a very emotional chord. In this job we see the best and the worst — and the worst that we see, most people can't imagine in their worst nightmares. We deal with friends that have met tragedy, we deal with family that have met tragedy, and many times we have to come tell you about that. That's probably the most difficult thing. I can remember every single death message that I've ever delivered.

So, some of the strongest memories are not the happy times. They're the horror that you have to see and endure. It's not something you get used to. You better not get used to it, because if you get used to something like that, I don't think you're still in touch with humanity, and you've lost your compassion. If you ever lose your compassion — in law enforcement, nursing, other service careers, you probably need to find something else to do.

It seems taxing to face tragedy on a regular basis. How do you manage?

There's a couple different ways. You train. You try to imagine every contingency, which you can't, but you try to. I think at the end of the day, the people that I've seen that deal with tragedy or stress the best are those who have strong faith. And that's what's helped me through everything that I've gone through, is a strong faith and belief in God, and a belief that we don't get to know why. There usually is no answer to why. That involves a plan much greater than any of us. So that helps get you through that stuff, but you still wonder why bad things happen to good people. It's a question that won't be answered for any of us on this earth.

In a lot of ways, I think most first responders have a lot of stuff in their head they wish they could get out of their head. But it's there, and you have to find a way to live with it.

What do you consider your greatest career accomplishment?

My greatest accomplishments, that I see for myself, are from when I ran the (Region V) Drug Task Force. I think the cases I made and assisted on with (the task force) made a great impact on this community, and the efforts that continue today are very important because the majority of crime is part of a drug nexus.

That was my favorite job I've had in law enforcement. But I've been, of course a patrol office, a K9 officer, a traffic officer. I was a narcotics investigator, I was a patrol sergeant, patrol lieutenant. So my experience was pretty broad, I was given the opportunity to try a little bit of everything during the time I was in.

Tell me some more about your work with the Region V Drug Task Force.

It's a regional task force made up of five of the surrounding counties (Curry, Roosevelt, Quay, De Baca, Guadalupe), and everybody pools their efforts and their personnel to do narcotics investigations in the different areas and target the drug traffickers. As the narcotics or task force supervisor, I worked with many different county and local agencies. I also worked with many federal agencies and had the opportunity to be a task force officer with the FBI for a while. I was not an FBI agent, but you're a task force officer and you have FBI credentials, and I traveled extensively on investigations. That was very interesting and I enjoyed it very much. I worked extensively undercover, which was very exciting, but terrifying.

Is undercover police work very much like what we see on television or in movies?

Not really. It's not nearly as glamorous. You many times find yourself in very dangerous situations working undercover, where you don't know the people you're dealing with. They may suspect that you're the police and they may try to lean on you to find out. It can be very uncomfortable, to actually make that buy or that drug deal and make a case against somebody who's poisoning the community.

Plus, you have to try to blend in and act like them, all the while remembering that you're the police, and you're trying to make a case on this person that you're befriending, basically. It's nothing like television, as far as police officers using drugs undercover. We don't do that, and there's ways to avoid that. I had people try to force me to, but I was always able to get myself out of it, like saying "I have to take a urine test tomorrow at my probation office, I can't do that today."

It seems challenging to go undercover in a relatively small community. Did you wear a disguise?

A lot of times we worked undercover out of town, but sometimes we did work in town. I actually did oftentimes wear a disguise. I had a wig with a ponytail and I'd wear a cap with it, and I had these fake teeth that I would wear — they were expensive and looked very real. And it changes your look a lot.

I actually had conversations with people about me, Mike Reeves. They brought me up and I was like "yeah, I heard about that guy." Some very funny stories about stuff like that. It's uncomfortable at the time, but those situations get a lot of laughs later. And they always say the same thing when you go to court or you arrest them: "I knew you were a cop, I knew it was you."

Did you make many significant busts while heading the drug task force?

I believe we did, we made some major federal cases over the years; confiscated a lot of drugs and money and I think made a very significant impact. I do have what I consider to be my career case in narcotics — without mentioning any names, it was a major methamphetamine trafficker who had operated in the community for at least 20 years, but there had never been a case made against him. When I was an FBI task force officer, we made a case against him, and he's sitting in a federal penitentiary now. We seized a lot of money and meth from him, and disrupted a very large drug trafficking organization that goes all the way back to California and Mexico. I spent a lot of time in LA working on that case. Unfortunately, you can't ever really ever completely disrupt the cartel, but it was an arm of one of the cartels that had trafficked into eastern New Mexico for 20 years.

What major changes have you observed in the issues law enforcement here face?

Methamphetamine was pretty prominent early in my career but kind of went away when the precursor laws happened and they were able to control the precursor to making it. But it's made a tremendous resurgence, along with the resurgence of opiates, particularly heroin and fentanyl. It's very well known that people get addicted a lot of times to prescription painkillers. When they lose the source of those, they can end up on the street looking for opiates. It's a tragedy, and it's growing.

I see it from both sides — from the law enforcement perspective and the health care perspective. It's an addiction that's very powerful and very difficult to address. Particularly in New Mexico, as the resources are very, very slim for treatment for addictions. I wish I had the answer to that problem. It's certainly a huge problem.

Have you also seen changes in local attitudes toward law enforcement?

I think we're very fortunate in this community — the vast majority of people in this community support law enforcement, which is not necessarily the same nationally. I hope that the people of this community continue to support the first responders, and consider what they go through and the position they're in, because they do many things that most people would not be willing to do. They deserve our support — they're just a great bunch of people who love the community or they wouldn't be doing what they're doing.