A lifetime of hard calls

The full story

Kevin grew up in Reedsport, Oregon, in a family with three generations of police officers. He started his first business, a baseball card shop, in high school, where he also played on two state championship teams. In college he ran a vending machine company. His father retired as a sergeant with the Reedsport Police Department, and his mother was a dispatch supervisor who served as administrative assistant to six police chiefs. At 18, Kevin followed them both into law enforcement, starting out serving civil papers for the Clark County Sheriff's Office in Vancouver, Washington.

Over the next three decades he served city, county, and state agencies in Washington, Idaho, Oregon, and Utah. As an Oregon State Police Resident Trooper he was named Trooper of the Year and built a Resident Trooper program for Western Douglas County, Oregon. Under his watch, collisions in his patrol area dropped by more than 75%. With the Portland Police Bureau, he earned the Police Medal for courage in the line of duty, two Unit Commendation Medals, and the Professional Service Medal after September 11th. He became a sergeant supervising field training for the Reserve Division and a Verbal Judo instructor trained personally by founder George Thompson. He investigated a case against an organized retail theft ring, aggregating theft charges across multiple counties that resulted in prison sentences for those involved. In Powers, Oregon, he took over a police department that had stopped functioning. He started with a badge number but no badge, a gun belt but no gun, and a patrol car with no lights. He rebuilt the department from the ground up and recruited a small team to get the work done.

Through it all, Kevin practiced community policing the way it was meant to be done. As the Reedsport Area Resident Trooper, he served all of Western Douglas County from his hometown, the same town where his father spent his entire career. Some nights Kevin and his dad were the only officers on duty for 30 miles, with his mother running the radio. They knew the people they served by name, and the people knew them. That connection is how the crash numbers came down. Kevin worked all three pillars of highway safety: engineering, education, and enforcement. Community partners donated equipment and pushed for safer highway engineering, neighboring agencies stepped in to help, and targeted enforcement, concentrated patrols during high-risk hours on the most dangerous stretches of highway, and even the Oregon State Police airplane did the rest. That kind of connected, effective policing has become an almost lost art, and Kevin teaches agencies how to get it back.

Along the way, Kevin kept building. He created, owned and co-hosted the Real Estate Rebels Radio Show, which became the top-rated show in its Wednesday-morning time slot. He co-founded two branches of an investment mortgage company and an investment advisory firm, built two trucking companies, and served as Director of Human Resources for his businesses. He also spent time as a professional baseball umpire, appearing on regional and national TV.

Then life knocked him down. By 2017, an injury had taken him out of police work, his trucking business was struggling, and he was driving for Uber to make ends meet. A conversation with one of his passengers led to an introduction at a national seminar company. Two months later, Kevin was on the road as a professional trainer.

On stage, he found his calling. Kevin has delivered live seminars and webinars in 38 states on leadership, management, communication, and employment law, and ranked #3 out of more than 300 trainers at the largest seminar company in the United States, a ranking open only to trainers with top audience evaluation scores. He holds the SPHR certification, a Master's Degree in Management, and a Bachelor's Degree in Criminal Justice, summa cum laude.

Today Kevin speaks to law enforcement, HR, and leadership audiences across the country with one message he has lived in every chapter: the hard things are the blessing. Rise where you stand.