Retired Toledo reserve officer Randy Pennington was getting ready to return his patrol car after his last shift with the police department in July 2022 when he got a call from Winlock Police Chief Stephen Valentine.
“He said, ‘instead of turning it in, you should just change colors,’” Pennington said, recalling how Valentine asked him to come work in Winlock.
“I said, ‘’Now, Steve, I’m not chasing no more bad guys.’ And he said, ‘Well that’s what’s really cool: is you don’t have to chase bad guys.’”
Valentine had wanted to assign Pennington to Winlock Elementary School as a school resource officer: a law enforcement officer who is responsible for safety and crime prevention within a school.
“I said, ‘No more chasing bad guys?’ ‘Not unless they’re at school.’ ‘Hey, that sounds like something I can do,’” Pennington said, recalling the conversation with Valentine.
Pennington has a long history with Winlock Elementary School, as he frequently ate lunch there with the students during the 30 or so years his wife, Carrie Pennington, worked at the school.
“I got kids now who have kids of their own and still call me ‘grandpa’ and ‘officer Randy,’” Pennington said of the Winlock students he came to know over the years.
After working out a contract with the Winlock School District and undergoing some additional state-required training, Pennington started his new volunteer job as Winlock Elementary School’s school resource officer on the first day of school for the 2023-24 year: Tuesday, Aug. 29.
Knowing how important the first day of school is, Carrie Pennington crafted her husband his own sign to hold up for a photo op before sending him off to school.
She also made him a custom “Officer Randy” nameplate out of donut letter stickers for the door of his office at the school.
“You’ve got to love my wife,” Randy Pennington said.
Pennington’s school resource officer duties are limited to just Winlock Elementary School for now, but there has been some discussion of having him go between the high school and the middle school as well.
Pennington’s primary responsibility as school resource officer is to keep the staff and the students safe. His contract allows him to set his hours “at my convenience,” he said, which for him means sometimes leaving school early and coming back in the evenings when there are events going on so he can make sure everyone gets home safe.
The most positive part of his job though, he said, is interacting with the kids.
“This gives an opportunity for these kids to realize ‘a police officer is my friend, maybe he can help me. He doesn’t have to shoot somebody, he doesn’t have to arrest somebody, and he can help me,’” Pennington said.
Pennington is not paid for his work, but he said he hopes the community will see the value in having an officer at the school.
“My hope is it is so positive, in the future, there will be a fully funded position for a guy — not me — but in the future, they’ll see the value of it and they’ll find the funding source to have cops in the elementary school, the high school and the middle school. It might not happen in a year or two, but I hope it will happen at some point,” Pennington said.
