Oral History Program Marcy Korgenski Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 5 September 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Marcy Korgenski Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 5 September 2019 Copyright © 2022 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Beyond Suffrage Project was initiated to examine the impact women have had on northern Utah. Weber State University explored and documented women past and present who have influenced the history of the community, the development of education, and are bringing the area forward for the next generation. The project looked at how the 19th Amendment gave women a voice and representation, and was the catalyst for the way women became involved in the progress of the local area. The project examines the 50 years (1870-1920) before the amendment, the decades to follow and how women are making history today. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Korgenski, Marcy, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 5 September 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Marcy Korgenski Circa 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Marcy Korgenski, conducted on September 5, 2019, at Weber State University, by Lorrie Rands. Marcy discusses her life, her memories, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. Raegan Baird, the video technician, is also present during this interview. LR: Today is September 5, 2019. We are on the phone with Marcy Korgenski, conducting an oral history interview for the Women 2020 project here in the Special Collections at Weber State University. I am Lorrie Rands conducting and also present is Raegan Baird. Alright, I just want to say thank you again for your time, and let’s start with when and where you were born? MK: I was born in Los Angeles, California, July 12, 1956. LR: Okay, did you grow up in Los Angeles? MK: No, my mother was born in Clifton, Idaho in the Preston area, and her mother migrated to Ogden. I’m third generation Ogden, but I have kind of a mixed up story. My mother, when she was a teenager, moved to California to live with her aunt, my grandmother’s sister, and met my father there. They got married and I came along. LR: So did you actually grow up in Ogden then? MK: Well, I did and I didn’t. I started in Orange County. I lived in La Mirada, California, that’s the first home I remember, and my dad owned that home until he died at age ninety-one. My mother was eighteen when I was born and my father was forty-one. It was not a successful marriage and when I was in first grade, I was 2 six years old, my brother was five years old, my mother abandoned us. We lived with my father in La Mirada and then subsequently in Buena Park, California until I was thirteen or fourteen years old. Then my mother came and stole us back. So I lived most of my younger years without a mother. LR: Okay, my next question is what were your parents’ names and their occupations? MK: My father, he had been in the military in World War II and he was on the U.S.S. Hancock, and he came out and became a plumber for new buildings. He also was a landowner and property owner and owned quite a few apartments and a couple of houses. So he was relatively well to do, he wasn’t wealthy, he had a good source of income I should say. He did that until he retired and continued to be a property owner and landowner in California until he died. My mother, she was a little bit more on the wild side. She started out as a waitress and then she worked in a few bars. Then she got a job at Hill Field and was a sheet metal worker on the F-16 and then she ended up remarrying a man in the Army and they moved to Germany so she didn’t keep that job anymore. Later on, she just did little odd jobs, they managed a motel and did those kind of things. Nothing too significant after they returned from Germany. LR: Okay, what were your parents’ names? MK: My father’s name was John Major and my mother’s name, when she died, was Sandra Herbert. Her maiden name is Sant, Sandra Sant. LR: What are some of your memories of growing up in La Mirada and Buena Park? 3 MK: Well okay, in California, when I grew up there, I lived in La Mirada and went to school. I have memories of before my mom left and where we were just basically the neighborhood kids and just played around in the neighborhood, they were all tract homes. And then after my mother left, my father started acquiring property and so we would drive around quite a bit. At that time, that would be the early 1960s, California still had a lot of orange groves and dairy farms and things like that and they were in our area, in Orange County. Now I doubt there are any left in Orange County, but at that time I remember those. Also after my mother left, my dad loved the beach so we spent a lot of time at the various beaches like Long Beach, Seal Beach, Newport Beach, and Huntington Beach. We went to the beach a lot in the summer. We would be there almost every weekend. We spent a lot of time in the ocean and playing in the water and things like that. The rest of the time my father was very strict and a little eccentric and so he was a difficult man. He didn’t really trust people or anything so he wouldn’t allow us to really socialize or to even leave the yard. As we got old enough to be home without a babysitter we weren’t allowed to leave the house. We would sneak out and steal his change and go to Knott’s Berry Farm and play and do some things. Most of the time we wouldn’t get in trouble but one time we came home with a sunburn and got in trouble that day. But we ended up having quite a bit of fun, my brother and me, we pretty much ran the household. I did all the cooking and cleaning and my brother helped my dad more and then we would also work at his apartments. We would pull weeds and do little things like that, nothing too significant. For a couple of years we lived 4 with one of the apartment managers and her four kids. My brother and me and her four kids with her in a two bedroom one bathroom apartment. I think my dad was just desperate for a babysitter during that time. I’m trying to think of what else. I remember the Helms’ Bakery Truck would come by every so often and we would always go get a doughnut. They had doughnuts on these Helm Bakery Trucks that would drive through the neighborhoods; much like an ice cream truck would come through now. Those doughnuts were delicious. I never did learn how to drive in California, when I learned to drive I lived in Utah, I didn’t really get a good sense of direction or anything while I was there. My brother, he still lives in California and I still live here. When my mother came and stole us back from my dad, my dad showed up in Ogden and invited us to go for a coke in his car. My mother said, “If you get in that car you won’t come back.” I couldn’t risk that so I didn’t get in the car, my brother did and he never did come back and still lives in California. I live in Idaho now, but in Utah at that part. LR: Alright, was it strange to all the sudden, I mean, you say you were stolen back by your mother, was it strange to all of a sudden pick up and move to Utah? ‘Cause you were thirteen. MK: No, not for me because I really wanted my mother. I had tried to call my grandmother but her phone number was unlisted and I had no way to get her phone number. We had spent two summers with my mother and grandmother in Ogden when we were like nine and ten years old and then my dad wouldn’t let us come anymore. That was part of my problem I think, had he let us do that I would probably still be in California. But I had written a letter to my mother because my 5 father was so difficult. I needed to get out of there, I couldn’t take it anymore. So I had written this letter and I didn’t even know she was coming and she came and said, “Let’s go.” My dad was so difficult my brother and I both agreed to go willingly. We were scared but we were happy about it. We rode the train, and so that’s another thing we did. I got to do that and a lot of people haven’t had a good opportunity. We went several times back and forth on the train from California to Utah to Ogden to California. That was quite an experience, it was very interesting and it was a lot of fun for a little kid to do. LR: Yeah I bet. As a young girl who were some of the women you looked up to and why? MK: Well I really didn’t have anybody. So I read that question, and I was trying to think about who that would be, so my grandmother. She was a very kind and nice person and I got the opportunity to spend some time with her when we had visited as little kids but also those two summers I spent a lot of time with her. I looked up to her because she was a very, very sweet woman. She was never judgmental. She accepted everyone for who they were, she was very giving, caring, and generous. She was kind to animals and she loved them and she cared about her family and she was a very hard worker. She never complained so she would be probably the number one I think. I thought of two teachers that I really liked, one was my first grade teacher. I just remember her being a good teacher and nice. I remember a couple of little comments that she made. My sixth grade was a very good teacher and I really 6 liked her a lot and she would read to us every day and said, “That really stuck with me, I really liked that,” and so I think those three. LR: Okay, thank you. When you moved back to Ogden, how was school different? I realize you were now more in junior high, high school time but did you find schooling a little different? MK: It was drastically different in California. I was in junior high and when I left the girls were all wearing nylons and make up. School was more advanced. I came to Utah and it seemed like, when I first went I went to Central Junior High school which is where Madison is now, 25th and Monroe. We went to school and I honestly thought we were at an elementary school because everybody looked so much younger and everybody was wearing knee high socks at the time and we didn’t wear knee high socks in California. We still had to wear dresses during that time, even in California we had to wear dresses but we had a lot of days where we could wear pants. It seemed like everybody was younger and less sophisticated and it seemed like the education was different. I think right now maybe the education was probably comparable but at the time I thought it was a lot more backwards. Another thing to in California, the schools are all open and pretty much outdoors, you’re outdoors a lot, and in Utah, the schools that I was in were indoors because of winters. The schools were more contained. The other thing, even though I was in California, there were different races in the school but not really, and it seemed like there was a more diverse population in Utah in the school I went to. 7 LR: Really? MK: Yeah, because in California there was some diversity but it just seemed less diverse than in Ogden. LR: Oh wow, so Ogden was less diverse or more diverse? MK: Ogden was more diverse with the population. I think it was just where I lived. LR: Okay. How long did it take you to get into the swing of living and going to school here in Utah? MK: I don’t think I ever really did quite fit in because I didn’t understand the LDS culture. I never really did comprehend that during the whole time I was in school, and even probably after I was out of school. The first year I lost my brother because he went back to California so I missed him. I really liked sports so I ended up playing sports at Central and that helped a lot. I was able to find a group of people that I could identify with, so I played volleyball and different things. So I really liked that and that helped a lot and I never ever had too much trouble with school, I was sort of an average student. I think that first year at Central, even though I didn’t really understand a lot of things, I still had a lot of fun, I enjoyed it and I was just happy I was with my mom in Utah. There was sort of a trade-off there. My mother smoked and so did her husband. A lot of people smoked in that time in a lot of public places and everything, but I didn’t realize that I probably smelled like smoke all the time, I didn’t even recognize that. I think there were some issues there. I did make some friends with some LDS girls and I actually was baptized during that time and I did 8 go to church with them for quite a long time until I was asked to do a presentation in church and that scared me so bad I never went back. It scared me all the way out of church. I wasn’t ready for that. LR: Right. Did you end up going to Ogden High School then? MK: I did but because I had been so sheltered by my father and it was a completely different story with my mother, she had two more kids and a new life that surprised me, I didn’t even expect that. So I went a little bit wild and I went to my sophomore year only, and I ended up pregnant and married. I was young so I dropped out of school. I had all the odds. LR: Okay, the next question I’ve asked this of everyone; so were you encouraged to pursue an education? MK: Well, so back then when you were pregnant you had to drop out of school, there was no real option at that time. Luckily, I had gotten married. During the time that I was with my father, we did have discussion about education and I know that he had hoped that we’d get an education but it was never really a big part of our plans or anything. I never had plans to go, I mean, I would have hoped to have gone to college but I never had any real plans about it or anything like that. Nobody else in my life ever really encouraged me for college, it was my own dream. After I got married, we were obviously too young, I had wanted to finish my high school. I couldn’t fathom not having a high school diploma at all, it wasn’t okay with me. I had tried to go to school at night but my husband at the time would not babysit the kids. After we got divorced I was able to go to a school that 9 had a babysitter right at the school. So I was able to finish my high school there. My diploma is through Weber State, my high school is through Weber State, it says Weber State right on it. LR: That’s kind of cool. So you’re sixteen, you’re pregnant, how do you think, I’m trying to envision what that would be like and I am struggling, but how do you think that affected and changed your life? MK: Well, at the time, I tried out for the cheerleaders pregnant. I wanted to be a cheerleader, I was in gymnastics. I had contacted the hospital to be a candy striper. I don’t know what they are now, but at that time they had candy stripers at the hospital, they could go and volunteer at the hospital as a candy striper and I was really interested in that. I think I probably would not have made cheerleader because I wasn’t quite ready for that. But I think I might have ended up maybe in the medical field, I don’t know. I don’t know if I would have liked it or hated it but that was where I was headed. Once I got married then I was a stay-at-home mom, and then I had another, so I had my daughter and then I had a son pretty fast after that. All that time I was a stay-at-home mom and I was never really satisfied with that at all. I needed more; I started to try looking for jobs, I wasn’t happy at home by myself all the time. LR: What were the job opportunities that you had as a stay-at-home mom? Did you have a lot of options? MK: Well I was pretty naïve and ignorant about the world, I didn’t know anything at all, but I did go work at a café briefly and I was a terrible waitress. The name of that 10 café was Keeley’s Café. It was on Washington Boulevard, sort of where MarketStar is now. That was fun because, at that time they were called meter maids, we call them parking enforcement now, but all the meter maids would come in everyday and get a coke and leave me a dime tip. All the city and county workers would come in there. I did that briefly, my cousin had worked there and so I worked there because she did. It was no money basically and I hated the job. I wasn’t good at it. Later my other friend's mother-in-law, ‘cause at that time all of us who had gotten married young all hung out together. We all knew each other and had our kids together. This friend, her mother-in-law worked at a nursing home in the kitchen, so I came into the nursing home and worked in the kitchen as a cook and then I went out on the floor. They called us a nurse’s aide at that time, now they are called CNAs, but basically you just feed the people who live there, and dress them, and change their diapers, and put them to bed or whatever. So I did that for a while and I didn’t love that job either. Those were the two things I did. LR: Okay, was this before or after you finished your high school diploma? MK: No, I never got my high school diploma till I got divorced. I was married for four years and so I was divorced at age twenty. LR: Okay, so after you got divorced, did you have more options then? MK: Well I knew I could go to school, so thank goodness. At that time they called it welfare, now they call it assistance, but I went on welfare. I seriously had no income, no money, my father wouldn’t help me because he never got over the 11 fact that I went to live with my mother. He was a very angry man so he never ever supported me financially. My mother didn’t have the means to support me at all or do anything for me, so I was on my own. I had a little car, my uncle had given it to me, and it was a convertible. The kids played on it so the top was broken open. I did have another little car, I had two cars and I ended up with old cars. So I had a hard time with transportation. I did end up having cars and I did kind of figure it out. I went to what was called the Skills Center North, because I knew I wanted my education. So I went on welfare. They gave me food stamps and a little bit of money, not enough, and I went to school and they had the daycare there, thank goodness because that’s the only way I could have done it. I went to school, which was really the opportunity that got me where I ended up. While I was getting my education I took drafting and I was able to get my high school diploma and get a certificate in drafting. That’s what happened and that was on 12th and Washington, where the old Weber High School was, it changed to the Skills Center North, a subsidiary of Weber State. Now it’s the ATC. LR: Okay, so you got your high school diploma, and with that it sounds like you also got a college degree too? MK: No, it was just like Weber State is a part of ATC. Weber State was the, well, I don’t know the structure. Basically, Weber State ran the Skills Center North. LR: Okay, I’m making this more complicated than it needs to be, I understand now. So once you had your certificate in drafting did you pursue that as a career? 12 MK: So this is what happened, I needed a job, I really needed a job. So I saw the IRS was hiring and so they had a test, you had to go take this test up at Weber State. The day I went to take the test I had jumped off the porch and severely sprained my ankle but I still went and took that test, it was difficult. I just remember how hard that was, and I was able to get hired at IRS in the mail room. So I went in there and I worked like six to two-thirty or something. I would get up really early and I would come home pretty early. But I sat in the mail room and opened mail all day and I hated it because for lunch they rang a bell, and then if you had to go to the restroom or something you had to raise your hand. It wasn’t good for me, I wasn’t good at sitting behind desks. I didn’t know that at that time, it didn’t work for me. Now I could, but at that time I wasn’t able to very well. So I was at work and I was planning on staying there because I didn’t know what to do. I got a call from one of the drafting teachers from Skills Center North, and he said there was an opening at Weber County Planning Commission but it was the Ogden City side. It was all Weber County at that time, it wasn’t separate, Ogden City and Weber County. Weber County also handled Ogden city. He said they needed a draftsperson, would I be interested? So I went and I applied for that job and I got that job. LR: Okay. What were some of the things that you did at that job? MK: At that time they had a CETA, C-E-T-A, grant and that’s the money that was used to hire me. I was on a year contract, basically, with that CETA grant and if they liked me they would keep me and if they didn’t like me they wouldn’t. At that time I wasn’t able to really apply myself to a desk job and that was a desk job. I 13 drew maps for all the new subdivisions that would come in, and I would do some work on plats. I would go out in the field and I actually took pictures of the area before the Ogden Mall was built. I learned everything, I learned everything about planning in Ogden City and we would prepare for the planning commission meeting. People would come in, and I wasn’t one of the people who would talk to the public when they would come in but I would listen to all of it and go to the meetings. So basically, I did everything but my main job was to work on the maps and the platts and things like that. LR: Okay, how long did you do that for? MK: I did it for one year. LR: Where did you go to next? MK: After that, they didn’t want to keep me and I don’t blame them. My friend had gotten a job with traffic engineering for Ogden City and they needed a traffic engineering aide in there. I applied for that job with Ogden City and got it. I worked as a senior traffic engineering aide. There were a couple of us and then they made a smaller department. So I went to work for Don Godfrey who was the traffic engineer and my girlfriend was a secretary there and I was the draft person, basically, and the field person or whatever. In that job I would also draw street maps and things like that. Then we would go out and I would spend a lot of time in a car doing traffic surveys, basically counting cars, and then I would also go help with striping and signing and measuring. We measured a lot of streets. I was basically Don Godfrey’s assistant. We worked with the sign shop at the city 14 for all the striping and signing, and we were this group of people that took care of the streets of Ogden. LR: That sounds fascinating. MK: I learned a lot about traffic engineering at that time too. LR: Okay. So during all this I realized that you’re still rather young. How were you balancing your home life with your work life? MK: Well I never had enough money and I never had enough food but we survived. I sent both of my kids to Head Start. I’m trying to remember how I had day care during that time, day care was always a challenge, and I’m trying to differentiate between that and when I was a police officer. The other thing too, I was single and a young woman. I mean, I was in my early twenties. I think I was twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, right in that age group. I had girlfriends and I started playing softball and playing sports with some friends. That’s kind of where I got my social life, and I did take my kids everywhere I went. I was on all the teams and things like that. Everywhere I went my kids would go and then I dated and different things. I would go with my friends and stuff so I just had a neighborhood girl who would sit for me sometimes. In fact, I am still friends with her on Facebook. LR: Okay. So how long were you with Godfrey? MK: Three years. LR: Three years, and did you get to see how the Ogden Mall was built? 15 MK: I remember the controversy, and I’m trying to remember the names of the people who were involved. I remember that it was built and I remember everybody talking about how it would be this great place to be. I started to know some of the police officers by then. They were like, “Oh yeah we can have a part time job over there. It’s going to be so great,” and other people saying, “We’re ruining the integrity of Ogden.” I don’t remember actually how it was built. I know that some of the more influential people in town, I think Ralph Nye maybe was one of the people. I can’t remember if that’s his first name, but there’s a scholarship up at Weber State in his name. I think he was one of the principal people involved in making that happen. LR: Okay, I was just curious about that. So when did you decide that you wanted to be a police officer? MK: Well I was lucky enough that we moved midway through my time with traffic engineering to a different building. My building that I was in at that time was called the Annex and the Annex was next door to what used to be the old Elks Lodge and it was a school before that. In between that and the Wonder Bread. The Annex housed the sheriff’s office in the basement and then we were upstairs. There was this long hallway and both sides had offices. On the south side was Weber County detectives and the northside Ogden City had some of their people working, and they were the people who would be in charge of the crossing guards and in charge of the Reserve Corps, and in charge of different things that were not just regular police work but it was more ancillary stuff. So 16 more of the things that come with police work but aren’t necessarily exactly police work. That’s when I started to look at all of those people, and what really happened was I was working up there and I never was really satisfied with the traffic engineering job. I loved Don Godfrey, he was a wonderful man and a terrific boss, but I didn’t love the job and I knew it was a dead end job. I knew I wasn't going to be a traffic engineer and that wasn’t my dream and I didn’t want to go into any kind of civil engineering. Plus, I didn’t believe in myself enough at that time to think that I could do something like that. I saw all of those police officers, and deputies, and detectives and they just acted like they loved their jobs. They would come in and visit with me every day and talk to me and I made friends with some of those people. That’s how I got associated with police officers, and I really liked them. Also, there was a work out room in that building and sometimes they did some briefing in that building. Every day they would come in to meet before they would go out on the street. So I met a lot of the police officers when I worked up there. Harold Powell was in charge of Reserve Corps during the time that I was up there and so I was just chatting with him one day and I just said, “Could I be a reserve? Is that something I could do?” He said, “Oh yes.” At that time Ogden City Police Department ran its own post training because P.O.S.T. wasn’t as powerful then as it is now. I went through all of the training right there in the same building where I worked. After work I would just go right over there and go through all the reserve training and then I took the physical testing, and the 17 writing testing and everything and I became a police reserve. December of 1979 is when I passed my test. LR: Okay, what does a police reserve do? MK: So basically you work all-day events like parades, the rodeos, any kind of event where they needed police presences, we would go and work those. Of course it was volunteer, they give you a little tiny bit of money to help you with the uniform, but really nothing, and then you could ride along with the officers. So that’s what I did and one of my friends that I had been friends with for years, she became a police dispatcher so she was on the inside of the police department. I didn’t really talk to her too much about it until later. So for three and a half years I was a police reserve. LR: Okay, were you still working? MK: Yes, at the same time I was also at traffic engineering. LR: So when did you decide to become an officer full time? MK: So back then affirmative action was a big deal, but I didn’t really comprehend all of that too much. When I got into the Reserve Corps I excelled in there and I also met a lady by the name of Tracey Cragun, her name at the time was Tracey Van Leeuwan, and she and I became very good friends in the Reserve Corps. In fact, we are still lifelong friends and another woman that went into the Reserve Corps, Shawn Watts, her name was Shawn McKnight at the time, she and I became lifelong friends because of the Reserve Corps. So Tracey and I were in the Reserves, we’re having fun, enjoying it and I said to her one day, “You know 18 what Tracey let’s give it a year. If, in a year a job opening comes up,” because at that time it was very difficult to get hired because hundreds of people would show up for a job. Now it’s much different. So I said, “Let’s give it a year and if there’s a job opening we’re both going to apply. Let’s promise that we are going to do that.” She said, “Okay,” and sure enough a job opening came up and I just told her, “You know what Tracey, I can’t do it. I’m too chicken, I’m not going to do it.” She said, “Well you promised.” I said, “I did.” So we both applied and we both got hired. It’s her fault that I am a police officer. LR: What was your hire date? MK: March of 1982. LR: Did you ever regret the fact that you just did it, you just went and applied? MK: I was in heaven probably the first year. Like I said I was a naïve, young, cute girl and I was little. When I hired on with the police I was a hundred and sixteen pounds and five four, so I was tiny, I didn’t even know how small I was, I didn’t even grasp it or that I would be a target. I just didn’t understand the ways of the world at the time. I was just having so much fun and I loved everything and it was just great, but reality sets in and the reality is police work is hard and it’s challenging and you’re constantly questioning yourself. It’s lonely because you’re in the middle of the night in a car by yourself and you have to rely on your wits and yourself a lot. In Ogden, luckily there are close people for backup and a lot of people around. But it’s still a challenging job especially for a young, tiny female 19 out there trying to fight people all the time. At that time there were no women in law enforcement, hardly at all. Tracey got hired in January and I got hired in March, there were three other women before us. One was the very first woman and she struggled, she had a hard time. She stayed through her retirement but it was hard for her. There was another one who didn’t stay very long and I can hardly remember her, and then another one who stayed briefly and then ended up going to naval intelligence or something like that. There was one other so there was four actually, and the other one retired from there too. There were two of them from the four that actually retired from the PD. Women were not, we were brand-new, we were really tested and they wanted to see what we were made up and we had to try to be tough. That was a reality and that was hard, but we also had officers from all sectors. We had officers that hated women there and didn’t want anything to do with us, and others that were very happy that we were there, and then others that were very kind and would help us and do things to help us out. We had quite a variety of officers there at the police department; we were able to navigate through tough times. LR: What were some of the challenges that you faced besides just navigating the man’s world? What were some of the other challenges? MK: Well that was huge. That was probably everything, but luckily I was still a little bit naïve to comprehend it all at the time. I was just kind of like this happy puppy to be there in a way. One challenge that I found that quite a few of us had later, I didn’t know it, but one challenge was feeling that you fit in. Because they didn’t 20 really want us there, they had to because of affirmative action. They thought we got special preferential treatment and all kinds of stuff so we had strikes against us. Plus, you’re never one of the guys. Friendships are difficult because if you are friends with one of the guys, that guy looked weak. LR: Interesting. MK: Or people thought you were having an affair. I would make friends with some of the guys and we would be on the same shift and work together. The wives were always jealous and so I would become friends with these guys and it was a landmine. It was trying to navigate the landmines and I would have people come up and say, “Oh what are you doing with so and so.” I was just trying to survive and have friends in my job. I think all of us struggled with that. So that was part of it, but again there were two sides of that story because some people were just so kind and so welcoming it balanced everything. For us, we did not get maybe first choice at the training and different things like that, but then on the other hand, I was chosen to work in narcotics mainly because I was a female. So I had benefits too. Some things were negative and some things were positive. I was chosen by one of the sergeants to come work in narcotics so they could have a female in narcotics. I’m sure that made a lot of people who probably wanted that job upset. There were two sides to everything I guess. Going out on the streets, I had to pretend I was tough ‘cause I wasn’t really tough. I didn’t really know how to fight or anything like that. I had to do everything I could to look tough and act tough and be tough so the guys would respect me. I worked really hard on that. The number one thing, we always had to prove ourselves so we were constantly 21 in the magnifying glass trying to prove ourselves. We had to pay attention to our behavior all the time. LR: It almost sounds like the challenge was overcoming this stereotype of being a female in the police force and that was the biggest challenge you faced. Is that right? MK: Well that was a huge challenge and the other challenge is understanding the laws and how to apply what’s happening in the streets to fit with the laws and then to translate that to something that can go to court and convict someone, a criminal that committed a crime. Also to learn how to investigate cases, to see all the nuances in a case that would make or break the case, or see the differences in whether a person is innocent or guilty. On a particular homicide case a person confessed to the homicide and he didn’t do it, so there’s a very strong powerful force that wants you to believe that because then your case is solved. You have to be able to see beyond those things. A real challenge for me was actually seeing dead bodies initially. It was difficult. In fact, the very first dead body I had gone by myself. I stayed in the car for quite a while before I could go in. An autopsy was a very difficult thing, I was pretty intimidated by having to go to an autopsy. I got to the building and I saw a woman dressed up really cute, middle-aged woman, who worked there, and the autopsy was in the room and she just walked in and walked out. I thought, “Well if she can, here I am this police officer, I should be able to do it.” So that’s how I got myself into the autopsy and then after that you just look at it technically instead of it as a person. Another challenge is getting too wrapped up with the 22 people, because if you think about the people and what happened to the people and all the people and all the tragic things that happen and death; so you visit death pretty seriously when you’re a police officer because you see quite a bit of it. Particularly, there was a thirteen year old boy that got killed and I just really got pretty depressed about the whole thing. Thinking about the life that he missed and all of that. I found out that I couldn’t really allow myself to do that anymore, because I didn’t do anything to help anybody and it hurt me and so I had to stop. I had to prevent myself from going there and to think about death too much, so you just kind of keep it at an arm's distance. The other thing that happened that I don’t think anybody could have predicted, and I tried to warn a lot of young officers about this but they don’t understand it. What happens is you are this person who’s living in sort of a normal world and then you go into police work and there are a lot of bad people out there and they do bad things. They are not nice, and they don’t tell you the truth, and they want to see the worst happen to you. When people are in those situations, where the police have to be called, they are at their worst and their ugliest and they are willing to do things they probably normally wouldn’t do. You see a lot of violence, you become very cynical and you stop believing in people and you don’t believe there are any good people in the world. Plus you have a certain amount of power, so all those things together change personalities and a lot of police officers get divorced and a lot of police officers do things because they won’t associate with outside people, they only believe in police officers. That happens to everyone and nobody is immune and what I found is if you stay in a 23 place long enough and you get to see people for people again instead of just at their worst. There’s a cycle and you can go around and you start believing in people again and thinking people are good. But it takes a long time and it’s hard. If you spend a long time on the streets or in assignments that you see the worst of the worst it’s very difficult to escape that real cynicism and power cynicism, telling people what to do, bossy things. People change and their personalities change. So that was a challenge and I didn’t even know but my family said, “Oh you’re too bossy, you’re too bossy.” I still have that but I try hard not to be that as much as I was. LR: How did you come to recognize that and then make those changes? MK: Well because being in that world people react to you, reacted to me differently. I mean all my family would say, “Oh you’re bossy,” and so forth. We’d talked about it at work. I remember one officer telling, he was a detective at the time, he said, “You know I’m so tired of seeing these young men come into this job and they have a pretty wife and a nice family and the next year they are divorced and they lose their family, and they lose their kids, and they lose everything.” We would just talk about it and we could see, I mean it was just obvious when people come into police work, they're just a green person who has no real clue what’s about to happen to them. Then it does happen to them and as much as you tried to warn them about it you can’t, it still happens. So it’s just common knowledge there. LR: Okay. So you started out as just a regular police officer, did you make detective? 24 MK: Well let me go back just a minute, so I also want to tell you that there’s a lot of kindness out there too, because police officers aren’t all negative. When we see all these people in these dire straits, police officers a lot of times do a lot of things to help people along a little bit. Like giving them a ride, or throw some money at them, or bring them some food, or they’ll do things that you wouldn’t even believe they would do. I don’t want to say it's all negative, there’s so many kind and good things that people never see as well. So that’s another side of police work that’s pretty hidden. Also, with criminals there’s a lot of victims and so there are a lot of people who really are just in dire straits who need help and those police officers will do things to help them all the time. Anyway, yes, I did make detective. At first that was another challenge for me, I had been on the street for two years working graveyards, and afternoons, and different shifts all over the pea patch. A sergeant came to me and said, “Would you like to work in narcotics as a narcotics detective.” So I did that for five years, and then after I did that, I was invited to work in the detective division. So I did that for, I can’t remember, a few more years. I wasn’t very good at that, that wasn’t my best job. I wasn’t a very good detective. It’s hard being a detective. I did that and I worked all different types of crimes and then I went to community policing. I went back to the streets for a little while and then I was invited to work in community policing, so I did community policing for quite a while. LR: So I have two questions that stem from that. You said you weren’t very good at being a detective, why is that? 25 MK: Well, detective work is a lot of errand work. So you’re always running errands and you have a big heavy caseload and you have a lot of people who are wanting you to work on their cases, and it’s overwhelming. I know my niece is a detective in Sandy City and I asked her about her caseload and she has a heavy caseload too. There are a lot of cases of all different kinds and most of them are not solvable. A lot of people don’t want to talk to detectives so you really have to work hard. The red letter days—when you got confessions, and when you would actually work, and people confessed, and you put the whole case together, and you were able to take it to court, and the prosecutors were willing to prosecute the case, they were willing to file the charges on the case so you could actually get that case all the way through. So the percentage of that happening is pretty small. So big challenges, lots of different cases, kind of overwhelming, but also rewarding. Because when you have those good cases and you solve a lot of cases and solve a lot of crime then it was great. LR: Okay, and then what is community policing? MK: That was a relatively new thinking process because it became recognized that just being a cop on the street isn’t going to really solve anything, you just respond to the same thing over and over again. The theory behind community policing was that you could basically go in and look at the places where you’re having your constant calls for service and see if there is something you can do to mitigate that so you’re not getting called on service to that same place again. Being visible all the time and out on foot and working within the community to do different things. I was one of the first community police officers and I was 26 assigned to downtown. So I had an office in the mall and had other officers that worked with me in there and one of the things that I did was spend a lot of time on 25th Street, a lot of time in the mall but mostly 25th Street, and just kind of the downtown area. I worked a lot of homeless people and trying to keep the population down of homeless people on 25th Street. When I was hired on, 25th Street was pretty wild still and there was still a lot of prostitution and drugs and things and people being hurt. A man had been stabbed and died right in front of me on the street and just things like that happened. So 25th Street was pretty wild, and during that time in the 1990s, I was a community police officer and they had been working on 25th Street quite a while but then they were really trying hard to move 25th Street forward so it would be a place where people would want to be. At that time, people still weren’t interested in going to 25th Street even though there was some businesses that started down there. Roosters took a big risk and moved in down there and that was the first successful, that and I think City Club, were two of the most successful businesses that are still there. I’m trying to think of any other businesses that are still there but I can’t. Anyway, one of the challenges we have in community policing is that we had a lot of kids who would be truant from school or homeless or whatever and they would hang out at 25th and Washington at that bus stop area. It was a problem. They were dirty and they would be laying around and, in general, they were not contributing to society at all. It intimidated some people from being there and to use the buses and things like that. We tried a variety of things to stop the 27 kids from being there. We put in speakers on the poles with classical music, we changed the sprinkling system so that the grass and the places where they would hang out would be wet at the times they wanted to be there, and we did a lot of tobacco citations and things like that. We spent a lot of time and effort there to try to clean that corner up so that they would not want to be there. It was semi-successful but those are some of the things that we would do in community policing to try to curb crime. So I walked the streets a lot, I stopped in all the businesses all the time, I was always in all of those businesses and handling anything that they wanted handled the whole time I was there too. Any cases or any kind of crime or anything like that, I just took care of it. LR: Okay. So how did that area change over the course of your career? MK: Oh there is no comparison. When I first went there, there was drugs and prostitution. I mean, I would seriously go drive up and down 25th Street when I was bored just to see if there was something going on, and there was always something. There were two bars, I’m trying to think, one of them was El Borracho and one was Pancho’s. El Borracho and Pancho’s, one of them was in where Lucky Slice Pizza is and the other one is where Alleged is on that corner. I think it was El Borracho, it was so scary to go into that bar that the officers who would go in there would not let their back be to any of the people, they would only allow their backs to be to a wall or something, because they were so afraid they would be stabbed. That was when I first got there. There was active visible prostitution on the street, up and down the street from the light, too. There was a bar down there, I’m trying to think of the name of 28 it, I can’t think of the name of it right now, but they used to run the prostitutions from that bar. They’d go in and out of the bar and up to the corner of 25th and Lincoln and walk back and forth and then sit on the ledge of the Marion Hotel, which now has a new name, Hedricks or something, at that time it was the Marion Hotel, and they’d sit on that ledge out that window and they’d go back and forth. That was a constant and it was just never ending. There were no buildings where Karen’s Café and stuff is, there were no buildings there, and so I’d go behind that field behind the building and I’d watch it with my binoculars to see what was going on. A lot of homeless people on the streets at that time. When I very first came on as a reserve, there was a lady named Mary Ute, or something like that, and she’d feed all the homeless people. They’d give her their check at the beginning of the month, they’d get some kind of a check like their SSI or something, and then she would make sure they would have food for the month and a lot of times it was roadkill and things like that, but she fed all those people. I think it was the 200 block on 25th Street, I don’t recall exactly, but I think it was the north side of the 200 block of 25th Street where she was. It was a wild place and scary and regular citizens didn’t go there, they just didn’t want to spend time there. Then in the 1990s, they had just been working and working diligently to improve 25th and change it to what it is today, some brave people went in there. We had an ice cream shop down there that didn’t make it, and a bookstore on the north side that was wonderful that didn’t make it. A lot of courageous people went in there and tried to do businesses but it was just too early. Plus it’s still a challenge, Brick and Mortars is still a challenge, but 29 because of the people from Roosters and City Club, I think it developed from there and was able to get a hold and be what it is today. But now, nobody has any concern about going down there, people don’t mind going down there at night. It’s such a change from when I first hired on. Nobody would go down there, they were too scared. LR: Okay, that’s pretty cool. So in my notes I have that you were the first female Lieutenant in Ogden PD, is that correct? MK: I was and I was the first Street Sergeant. There was a Sergeant in records who was a female, but I was the first Street Sergeant, I was the first Lieutenant, and then I was the first Assistant Chief. LR: Okay, quite a few firsts. MK: Yes, I was lucky. LR: So did you face any challenges once you made Lieutenant? MK: Well I have to start with Sergeant, because Sergeant was the biggest challenge because Sergeant is the first line supervisor. That has the most applicants for promotion and the testing is brutal. It’s so intimidating that a lot of people don’t even do it because, they have a bunch of other reasons, but basically, it’s so intimidating that they don’t do it. I had tested for Sergeant early on and made a complete fool of myself but I still tested. I was friends with one of the other officers and he took it seriously and he did a lot of really smart things to test and so I emulated him quite a bit in those first early years. He would go buy a new 30 outfit and he would make sure he would look exactly right and he would do all these things. In the meantime, those first ten years I went through some pretty rough, dark days. I had started college a couple of times and didn’t make it even though I had funding and everything. I just had little kids the first time and the second time I wasn’t mentally prepared. So I said to myself, “I have to have another job that I can go to in case this doesn’t work out so I can retire as soon as possible and move on.” That’s when I went back to school in earnest and got my degree in business management. I figured I already had a criminal justice job so I didn’t need a criminal justice degree so I decided on business. I started in political science but I couldn’t see a viable career with political science, so I moved into business management. It was the best thing I ever did for myself really. When I went to college I was able to believe in myself, I found out I’m pretty smart. I found out I was able to go to school on an academic scholarship and have part of my college paid for. It really changed my life. Going to college was, I'd say, the very best thing I ever did for myself. It was really a significant change in my life. I didn’t even have a comprehension of how much would happen to me but it gave me confidence, it gave me the ability to believe in myself. Later when I decided I wanted to test for Sergeant and I’d gone to college and taken a zillion tests and I had a degree in business management, I was like, “Oh I can take a test,” I knew how to study. I remember I went into this room with all of these men and we were all in the same room to take the written test and I looked around and I said, “Wow there’s some great competition here,” never 31 really thought that I would have a real shot at it. That written test and that oral interview I came out number one. I couldn’t believe it. That was a significant change in my life. It completely altered my direction, I no longer wanted to leave the police department, I wanted to stay forever. LR: Okay. So the simple fact of finding that belief in yourself and going back to college helped you solidify your place within the police department, is that what you’re saying? MK: It really helped a lot, yes. Being a female in law enforcement you never really, really completely feel like you belong. But I felt more like I belonged during that time than I had before, so it did help me do that. It also gave me confidence in myself in knowing that I was able to accomplish such a significant role and do it so well. LR: Okay. So how long after you tested did you become Sergeant? MK: Not long, so I graduated from college in 1994 and I think I made sergeant in 1995 or 1996, I can’t remember exactly. LR: Okay. You’ll have to forgive me, I’m used to it being the other way around, the biggest challenge is when you're higher rank, to get that rank. MK: There’s fewer, there’s less competition as you get higher. LR: Really? MK: Yeah there’s fewer people to compete with. 32 LR: Okay, that’s not what I’m accustomed to. So when it was time did someone encourage you to put in for Lieutenant or was it just the next obvious step? MK: I was compelled to, there was no question in my mind that I would do that. LR: Okay, so when did you make lieutenant? MK: 1999. LR: Oh, that wasn’t that long after. MK: No, because we only have so many, you couldn’t be a Lieutenant unless you were a Sergeant. So competition was less, plus I had lots of practice because of the Sergeant testing, I’d done that a few times. I did have to go through one Lieutenant test that I did not get the job, the person with more seniority got the job. So it did take quite a bit of testing for me to get to that point. I was familiar with the testing processes by then, I understood what I needed to do to get through it so I was able to test pretty well. LR: What were the differences in your responsibilities between Sergeant and Lieutenant? MK: Well Sergeant you’re a first line supervisor, so you are in charge of a squad or a group of people who are on the street. I was a Sergeant in uniform so I had a squad of like six, seven people that would go out and work the streets and then I was their direct supervisor. Then I also had the gang unit, I went in and I was the Sergeant of the gang unit for a while. As a younger officer, when I was a detective, another detective and I started the gang unit. We wrote grants and 33 started the gang unit, so I was very familiar with the unit when I became Sergeant over the gang unit, which was fun for me. That’s still all first line, so whatever they’re doing on the streets you have to be there for them, you have to go out on the calls with them, I had to do their evaluations, I had to allow them to take sick leave or vacation or whatever, just everything a supervisor does, work with them if they have issues, or help them through their cases. Everything that a first line supervisor does, is a person like that. Then as a Lieutenant, I was basically the duty Lieutenant. So the duty Lieutenant is in charge of the entire city pretty much, all of the Sergeants and everything that’s happening in the city, the duty Lieutenant is in charge of on any given day, and not necessarily the detective or like other places or community policing, because they have all their own, but any uniform person on the streets, the duty Lieutenants in charge of. So the Sergeant reads all the reports and everything, but I would also read all the reports of everybody, every report that was written, to make sure that everything was handled. I would handle any kind of press; at that time the duty Lieutenant was also the PIO, so I handled any kind of press media issues. Any kind of complaint, phone calls, people at the front desk that had issues, any issues the sergeants may have, everything that would happen in the city, then I would have more of a global approach to supervision. LR: Okay. You mentioned that you helped start the gang unit. I am completely baffled, it just seems strange that a unit could be started, and this idea that you have to write a grant... 34 MK: So the resources in the police are limited and stretched and the people are too. So another detective and I, we started to know there was a gang problem blossoming in Ogden. It started during the same era that crack cocaine became big and there were a lot of crack cocaine sales over by Marshall White Center and we kept hearing things about 18th Street. We had no idea what it was, we thought it was 18th Street in Ogden, and we knew earlier there had been some signals that there were some gangs forming but nobody really took it too seriously. But as things progressed in California we also got residual issues in Ogden. We have long time crime families who just took to the gang world naturally, almost like they just fell into it. So we started having some gang problems and we modeled ourselves after Salt Lake City, they had a gang unit and we started learning about this gang unit. This detective and I, we found out about a grant that was available through the state, federal funding through the state. The state administered this grant. We got our hands on the model of Salt Lake City and this other detective and I, Dave Weloth, wrote a grant to initiate a gang unit. The chief that we had at the time was in favor of that so we actually wrote a grant and were able to get enough funding. I think it was around a hundred thousand dollars or something like that, I can’t remember exactly, somewhere in that neighborhood, to actually start a gang unit. He and I were the gang unit. I’m trying to remember when we first did it, I think it was later with me as a Sergeant, but we started working on gangs and learning about gangs and going out and doing presentations to everybody about everything we knew about gang problems. We tried to educate 35 the public and so it evolved. I moved on out of the gang unit, and the gang unit continued forward and it is still in effect today, so it was one of my legacies. I worked on it as a detective, as a Sergeant, as a Lieutenant, and an assistant Chief. It was one of my legacies so I really like the gang unit and I’m proud of our accomplishments there. LR: Thank you for sharing that. So you were Lieutenant and then the assistant Chief, is that an appointment or do you apply for that? MK: No, I had to apply for that and I tested for that as well. Well not a written test, it was an interview. LR: Okay, and obviously you got it. MK: I did. LR: What was that like for you to actually get all the way, starting out where you were uncertain, “Is this what I really want?” I mean that’s a great way to end up in a career, almost at the top. MK: So there’s kind of two schools of thought there, I really wish I would have known my capabilities as a young person because I think I would have made a lot better choices earlier on. I wish I would have recognized or had some way, or even a mentor that could have helped me along to help me believe in myself and start college sooner and that kind of thing. I really would have gone for my master’s degree and maybe even higher. I still regret that I don’t have those things. So that part of it, and then I would think how far I came. I was really counting my lucky stars. I was so lucky to be in that position and how lucky I was to have 36 done that when most of the people that ever worked in the police department never ever did that. I think I just really felt fortunate when I was there. LR: So how do you think education empowers? MK: Well for me it was everything, it empowered me to believe I could do anything, that I was capable of anything. By doing that, I had an environment in which I could succeed. Also, I became more worldly, I’m still basically a small town girl kind of person, but I’m a lot more worldly. I have a better comprehension of how the world is and my small part in it. When you don’t get that education you can’t possibly know some of those things. I think education for me, I just can’t stress it enough. It’s the most important thing in my life that I’ve done for myself. LR: When did you finally retire? MK: I retired in 2012, March of 2012, so I had exactly thirty years. I did feel like I retired early. My mother was sick and she lived in Richfield and I got to the point where either I had to go for police Chief, which I did apply for, but then I withdrew my application because I knew I couldn’t apply myself the way I need to for that, especially with my mom not doing well. I had a hard time with that decision but I also ultimately decided not to do it, and you always second guess everything. I think it was still the best decision. We had five officers shot in January of that year. One died and that was traumatic, but that is not why I retired, but that was a pretty sad situation. LR: Yeah, I bet. My next question is one that I have asked quite a few of our interviewees. What does the term ‘women’s work’ mean to you? 37 MK: Women’s work, like cleaning the kitchen, mopping the floors? LR: Yeah, the stereotypical… MK: Doing the dishes and taking care of the kids? LR: Yeah, what does that term mean to you? MK: I think it’s a little bit derogatory in a way. I mean it can be derogatory, but it really isn’t because it’s so important. Even though it seems insignificant I think that women’s work is so important in so many ways, because we are the nurturers. We take care of the children pretty much, we take care of the household pretty much and it’s so important that we take care of our families. Even though it seems derogatory, it’s also critically important and personally I embrace it because I enjoy it. LR: Okay, thank you. I have two more questions, but before I get there, is there any other story or memory that you would like to share? MK: Well I don’t know, ‘cause I wasn’t really sure how this interview would evolve, but I just have to say that police work saved my life I think and had I not found police work I don’t really know where I would be. It’s been absolutely a rewarding career. I think that some people along the way really helped me like Harold Powell and my friend Tracey and Shawn, some other people like Wayne Tarwater were really critical to my success as a police officer. John Greiner. There are a lot of other people that I can’t think of, but had I not found police work at that time of my life I don’t know if I would have been as successful as I’ve been. Because of the background that I described to you I could have easily 38 been in a completely different situation. I was very, very fortunate that I found it. In spite of some of the hard days, the majority of the days were great and it was a really phenomenal career. I learned a lot and I got to meet a lot of people and I wouldn’t change that for anything. LR: Thank you for sharing that. My next question is, if you had an opportunity to talk to a group of young women today to give them advice, what would you say? MK: I would say believe in yourself, number one. Be brave and courageous, go for it, don’t hold yourself back, get your education, and believe in your dreams and follow them. LR: Okay, and then the last question is, how did women receiving the right to vote shape or influence history, your community and you personally? MK: I have to say that I really think that if it weren’t for those first brave courageous women I wouldn’t be talking to you today because we probably wouldn’t be as far along as we are. I think that they changed everything, because they were also in a place where they didn’t technically belong. The men didn’t want them there and yet they prevailed and they were brave enough to get through that and push forward. I don’t think I would have been able to be a police officer without their pioneering efforts to improve women’s ability to vote and ability to speak for themselves and have a voice. I think women are still fighting for equality, particularly in Utah, particularly in regards to wage equality. Utah is the worst in the nation. I think we’re still fighting for that, however without those women I don’t think that we would even be as far as we are today. I think that we’re better off 39 than we would have been and I believe that all of us should try harder to be courageous and be brave and fight for the things that are important like they did. LR: Well, I would also add I think you did so I think you fall in that category, in my opinion. MK: Thank you. LR: You’re welcome. I don’t have any other questions. Thank you so much for your willingness and for your time and your candor. I really appreciate it.