Lt. Ray Shearin spent almost half his career with the Vance County Sheriff’s Office with two of the best partners he could have hoped for. They never took turns driving and never once paid for his lunch, but he’d have done anything for them, and probably the feeling was mutual.
His patrol buddies were part of the K-9 unit and Juneau and Rex were among the first canines to join the sheriff’s office.
Shearin reflected on his 28-year career with the local sheriff’s office during Monday’s TownTalk with John C. Rose. He will retire at the end of the month with 30 years of service, once you add in sick days, he said.
The Shearin family has a long relationship with the sheriff’s office – and with Sheriff Curtis Brame. Shearin’s father Henry retired in 1992 from the sheriff’s office just before his son left military service.
“My dad trained Sheriff Brame and Sheriff Brame trained me,” he explained. And all three have had the same VCSO number – S-4. “The sheriff was gracious enough to give me my dad’s number,” Shearin said, adding that it meant so much to him to be able to have the same number that his father had used.
Shearin said his father imparted many important life lessons that have stood the test of time:
“Dad’s work ethic. When you go to work, do your job,” Shearin said, adding that his father had been raised on a farm, “so he knew work. You go in and you give 110 percent and make sure everyone goes home safe, just like you.”
Shearin currently serves as the VCSO’s operations lieutenant, but he’s worked his way up like so many others from serving papers to working patrol shifts, up through the ranks of sergeant and now lieutenant.
There are about 60 employees in the sheriff’s office, he said, and estimated that between 20-30 are working at any given time of the day to keep the residents of Vance County safe and sound.
As he thinks back on his career and looks forward to his retirement, he said it is the camaraderie that he has enjoyed the most. “It’s a brotherhood and sisterhood,” he said of his fellow sheriff’s office employees.
“We’re a family,” he said. “We try to take care of each other.”
“The people in Vance County have been great to me.”
Which leads to another life lesson he learned from his father and utilizes every day he represents the Vance County Sheriff’s Office: “the goal is to treat people like you want to be treated,” Shearin said. “He’s the one who told me how to treat people and how to do your job and do it well.”
He said the use of computers has greatly enhanced the ability to be prepared in law enforcement, from typing reports instead of writing them in long-hand using carbon paper to make copies to having information readily available to ensure the safety of officers on patrol.
Deputies never know what a patrol shift may bring, so they have to be prepared for most any situation at all times.
Shearin said he will never forget when he and Juneau were called out to help locate a young child who’d followed her dog off into the woods and hadn’t returned home. It was just getting dark, he said, and he sent Juneau, a tracking dog, ahead. That dog “tracked her for over a mile,” located her by a pond, barking each time Shearin called the dog’s name – just like it had been trained to do.
“That’s the gratifying part,” Shearin recalled, “when something like that happens” and families are safely reunited.
“Having a partner like that, you always have someone you can rely on,” Shearin said. “Even when backup is coming.”
Both dogs retired to Shearin’s farm and lived out their days there. Juneau died of cancer and Rex suffered hip dysplasia in his older years. But they were – and remain – cherished members of the Shearin family.
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