Oral History Program Sergeant Heather Swaner Interviewed by Jennifer Reeves 27 March 2017 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Jennifer Reeves Interviewed by Jennifer Reeves 27 March 2017 Copyright © 2023 by Weber State University, Stewart Library 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 Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ 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: Swaner, Heather, an oral history by Jennifer Reeves, 27 March 2017, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections and University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Sergeant Heather Swaner Circa 2017 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Sergeant Heather Swaner. It was conducted on March 27, 2017 at the Davis County Jail in Farmington, Utah and concerns women in leadership positions in corrections. The interviewer is Jennifer Reeves. JR: This is Jennifer Reeves and I’m interviewing Sergeant Heather Swaner. Heather, start with telling us about your background as far as childhood, where you grew up, hobbies… Just a little about you. HS: I grew up in Davis County in Clinton, and then Kaysville. I graduated from Davis High. I have an older brother and younger sister. My parents are divorced. My mom remarried when I was like, I want to say seven. My step-dad who -technically, he legally adopted my brother and I, so. But he worked here for many years at the sheriff’s office, so that’s kind of how I got introduced to this whole environment. Let’s see: my childhood was pretty uneventful, basically. JR: Which is a good thing. (laughs) HS: Yeah, pretty much. I think one of the biggest things was when my little sister was born. I was eight. I was mad that she got a better name than me. That’s what I thought at the time, you know. JR: And what’s her name? HS: Rebecca. (laughs) Now I’m cool. I’m good with my name. Hobby-wise, I enjoy reading. Still read. I always -- I love to read. I get teased by people here about the books that I go through while we’re on graveyards, but what else is there to do? When it’s dead, it’s dead. I need something to keep me awake. 1 Hobbies, other hobbies… Right now, I enjoy running. Pretty much exercise in general. I used to really enjoy skiing. I quit doing it because it got expensive. I’m married right now. I’ve been married for eight years, or going on eight years. I have a little boy that just turned five and a daughter that’s 20 and a stepdaughter that’s 17. And my husband works here as well. JR: Awesome. And how about education? HS: I got my Bachelor’s degree from Weber State, graduated in 2005, I believe it was. And I got a Bachelor’s degree in criminal justice with an emphasis in corrections. My minor is health promotion. JR: Excellent. HS: Those two don’t really go together, but I was originally going for a Bachelor’s of Integrated Studies, but changed part way through so, just kept the health stuff because it interests me. JR: How did you like Weber? HS: I enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun there. For the first few years I was full-time there and then when I got hired on here, I couldn’t do that full-time anymore. So, then I was just part-time and did a lot of stuff online as well, but I mean I had fun there. Met a lot of cool people. A lot of the international students. I have a lot of friends still that were international students there when I was there. I liked it. JR: What experiences did you have, whether in childhood, teen years, adult years, that led you to believe that you were or could be a leader in your community? 2 HS: I don’t really have -- honestly, I don’t really have anything that stands out. I mean, in high school I was in FFA and I had a leadership position while I was in that, but I was never like a class officer or anything like that. I didn’t really do a whole lot of leadership stuff when I was younger, as far as being involved in that kind of stuff. Once I got hired on here, I just knew that I didn’t want to be a line deputy the entire time I worked here for the whole 20 years. So, that just motivated me to start asking questions of people that were in the leadership roles and kind of picking things from each one that I liked and not doing things that I didn’t like, that I saw other people doing. I can honestly say I didn’t have anything in my younger years that defined that moment for me [when] I was like, “Oh, when I grow up, I’m going to do this.” JR: And you said it was your step-dad that was in law enforcement already? So how did he influence, or did he influence you getting into criminal justice? HS: He never -- we never had any conversations about what it would be like to work in the jail. He explained, he told me stories about what it was like when he worked in the jail, but that was way back when it was a lot smaller and they only held maybe 50 people versus the capacity we have now. I went on ride-along’s with him when I was younger. And when I got hired on here, when I applied here, he was like, “Are you sure you want to do that?” and I was like, “Eh.” Honestly, when I applied here it was kind of a means to an end. I needed a job and it paid well, and it had benefits. So, I thought, “I’ll try this out.” Honestly, I never thought I would be here this long. I really didn’t. But it just kind of worked out and it’s a good job and it’s really not like, a difficult job. And it’s not mundane. 3 There’s a lot of variety and you can’t ever plan on one thing happening every day, because it changes every day that you’re here. I mean there’s certain things that are obviously routine every day that you’re here, but you never know what’s going to happen. But yeah, when I applied here, that’s all he said was, “Sure you want to do that?” and I was like, “Eh. Why not?” You know, so… That’s it. JR: Yeah. HS: And my grandpa used to be the sheriff here as well. JR: Oh really? HS: So, I kind of, I mean I had… And my mom used to work in dispatch, so I kind of had a working knowledge of what it was like. So, it just sounded fun and interesting and I thought I’d try it out. It’d get me through school. And then, I’m still here. JR: What are some of your core values? HS: I would say integrity. I value honesty and just being a hard worker. So, good work ethic. And those things probably, the work ethic and honesty were pretty much hammered into me when I was younger. My mom always used to say, “If you’re going to do something right, do it right the first time or don’t do it at all,” because when we were doing our chores, if they weren’t done to her standards -- which in her house her standards was ‘the right way’ -- if they weren’t done that way, then we had to re-do them. So I learned early on I may as well do it right, and do it right the first time so I don’t have to do it again. And that’s kind of something I expect of people here. If you’re going to do something, just do it right. Don’t take shortcuts. Don’t take the easy way out. 4 And integrity, that’s just one that -- I don’t know. Especially in this career, if you don’t have your integrity, then you may as well not even be working here. Because that kind of goes hand-in-hand with honesty. If you can’t, you know, be honest then you already lack integrity and nobody’s going to believe you. JR: How have your core values influenced your leadership experiences or abilities? Like, how do you lead others by honesty and integrity and work ethic? HS: I don’t ever do anything here or ask the people [the subordinates] that work for me to do anything that I wouldn’t do. And that’s one thing that they know. Like I’m going to do… I’ll jump up and do the dress outs, or the fingerprints, or the DNA stuff, or any of the stuff back in housing. Do changeouts or whatever. I’ll do that just as soon as I ask them to do it, so they know that that’s stuff that I’m willing to do. Just because I’m a sergeant now doesn’t mean that I’m not going to do it. So, I think that helps with them respecting my position because there’s people here who won’t do that. They’ll sit in their chair and they’ll give directives, but they won’t ever get up and do anything. And those are the people that other people have a hard time working with or working for. The integrity thing; I don’t believe in abusing sick leave. I portray that by basically showing up to work. Because there’s some people who, as soon as they get the number of hours necessary to cover their day off, they’ll call in sick. There [are] supervisors who have been here for a long time, who have been here longer than me, and have smaller leave balances than I do because they abuse their leave. And that’s another thing that people are aware of it. They don’t say kind things about those people of doing that, and it’s noticeable. 5 Just those kinds of things. Just being here, showing up to work when it’s expected. Not calling in sick on one of your Friday’s or your Monday’s or after a long weekend kind of thing. JR: Can you name a person who has had tremendous impact on you as a leader or perhaps a mentor that you’ve had in your life? HS: I’d say, a person here that I can think of would be a lieutenant that I used to work for, and he’s since retired. When I worked for him, I thought he was like a real stickler for certain things, but now that I’m not a lieutenant, now that I’m in a leadership position, I realize the stuff he did and why he did it. The things he had you do, or just the detail… Because he was always detail-oriented and it used to drive me crazy. Like, I’d go into his office and if I wanted to ask him a question, I’d look at my watch and be like, “Okay, how long do I have to spare?” Because he would talk a lot. Like, you would ask him this question and you’d get the answer plus the history and a bunch of other stuff, which, at times I was like, “Do I really need to know this?” But I find myself doing the same thing when other people ask me questions about policy here or the way things are supposed to work, or if we can do this, or how is this going to affect this, kind of thing. Plus, he never gave me a direct answer. He would always -- we would have a conversation and in that, you know, answering my question, it was eventually or usually me coming up with the answer. He never gave me -- well I don’t want to say never, because a lot of the times he had to give me an answer, but most times he made me come up with the conclusion myself, or the answer to my question myself. But he did it in a 6 round-about way that you didn’t really think you were doing that. You didn’t catch on at the time, then afterward you were like, “Yeah, OK.” And I find myself doing the same thing sometimes, just kind of leading people so that they can come up with the answer themselves, without me giving them an answer, because I know they know it. A lot of times people just want the confirmation that they’re doing the right thing. And I would say… gosh, I’m trying to think if there was anybody else. I mean, I haven’t really… Prior to me working here, I worked for the tax commission and that office was full of women. That’s why it was nice to come here where it was a lot of males (laughs), and not so many women because ugh! But yeah, I can’t really think of any other person that had a direct impact as far as leadership mentor roles, that kind of stuff. JR: Is there anything else you want to add on about why or how this lieutenant impacted your life generally or your leadership abilities specifically? I mean, you kind of already answered that, just if you wanted to add anything else on. HS: He taught me to be thorough, so to never just, for lack of a better word, half-ass a job. In addition to what my mom taught me when I was younger, you know. So I don’t, I have a hard time just taking part of an answer because I want to know the whole answer and I think a lot of that comes from him. So like if somebody says, “Oh just Google it, you can find out a little bit.” So you Google something, and you get your little paragraph of answer or whatever, but then it leads you to the other things. I’m that type of person, and he was like that, that when you Google something and it gives you that little 7 paragraph and it says, you know for whatever subject it is, and then it has the words that are bold that you can click on and it’ll take you to another page where you can read more… He was that type of a person and I’m that type of person. Like, I’ll read the next thing and read the next thing, so you keep getting a little more information because you know, information is knowledge. And that was one thing about him, that he was… When I was getting my education, he was the biggest supporter here in the office of me getting my education. Aside from the friends here that I had that knew what I was doing and whatnot, but he was one of the biggest supporters of it. But I think that that helped as far as when I go to find an answer to something, not just settling for the first thing that pops up. Because he was always holding these meetings of the people that worked for him and [saying] “Let’s think of how we can do this better and how we can do that better.” So I think I’ve taken some of those qualities from him and applied it to my position now. JR: That sounds like good qualities. What do you see as the biggest challenges of being a woman leader in our community or in your job, or in whatever environment? HS: I think probably one of the biggest ones is having your opinions or suggestions valued by people that are older. Because it seems like there’s some individuals who are a lot older than me, not a whole lot, but it seems like they kind of grew up in an era of “women aren’t really allowed to have opinions.” And you kind of get the feeling talking to them sometimes that if it was up to them, you wouldn’t even be in a leadership position because those are for men. You still find that 8 even in… It’s generally not so much the younger guys here, it’s the older ones. And it’s not everybody, it’s just a few of them. And a lot of it has to do with their culture that they grew up in, and I get it. But it’s frustrating because I could present an idea, and my husband could present the same idea and sometimes it feels like it’s better received, people are more receptive when it’s presented by him, even though technically -- well not technically -- I do, I outrank him. He’s a corporal and I’m a sergeant, but it seems like sometimes when it comes from him, it’s better received. So, and that’s frustrating. It kind of gets old and annoying. The other one is it seems like some people are threatened by the fact that there’s female supervisors, and so sometimes you kind of feel like you’re being undermined a little bit. But honestly, I’ve only got that a few times. The whole “females in leadership” and the fact that they don’t think they should be there. I’ve gotten that feeling more often than being undermined. JR: So the part two of that question is, what do you do to overcome these challenges? HS: You know sometimes if the issue that I’m trying to push is important enough, I won’t let it go. If it’s something that I really believe in, I’ll keep hammering on it. I’ll ask that person who can help make that change whenever I see them. I don’t want to say her, because the people above me, it’s all “him’s.” It’s all males. But I think a lot of times I just change my approach. Depending on personalities, you learn to adapt, obviously. But having a discussion with somebody and I guess, just changing my approach is the best way to say it. ‘Cause I don’t know if it 9 sometimes seems like I’m more demanding than what they’re… Or if that’s just their perception that I’m being demanding, but if you say, “What if I did this?” or “What if we do this?” Last year, I had a discussion with the supervisors on my crew prior to us approaching a more senior person saying, “Hey, we all think this is a good idea. What do you think?” And I think it was better received because all of us were there saying, “Yeah, we like it,” and not just one person’s idea. So, getting other people on board and then doing it again, having another go at it seems like it helps. Kind of rallying the troops, I guess you’d say. JR: It’s almost sad that that works. That that’s more valued than a single woman’s opinion. And you have to rally the opinions of others just to back up an opinion that you have. HS: And there’s some people that are really good about it. You throw something out there and they’re like, “Oh yeah, that’s a great idea.” And they’ll take it up and up and up. But there are others who are less receptive to it. Because there’s plenty of other female supervisors here, and we all think alike as far as when we have an idea for change, it seems like it’s well received, but I guess a lot of it is just the presentation. But you’re right, it does kind of suck that you have to kind of go get everybody else on board because… [But] at the same time, it does make sense to do that. JR: Sure. HS: But it kind of sucks. 10 JR: What advice would you give emerging young women leaders in order for them to be successful? HS: One, which sounds cliché, but I’m going to say it: don’t give up. Because the only person holding yourself back is mainly you. If you have a positive attitude and a belief that you can do it and really visualize yourself there, I think it’s a lot easier to get there. If you start off saying, “Well, that’s never going to be for me. And I can’t do that.” Or “so-and-so is better than me,” or “they have more skills,” then you need to get out of your own head and think positively and just kind of visualize yourself there. Because if I had thought those other people were more qualified than me, or had more time in than me, then I wouldn’t have even tried, or I would have just but maybe not have tried as hard. When I was testing both times, I knew I was testing against people who had more seniority than me. The way they do a lot of the testing is based on -you get your score, but some of what’s factored into that score is your seniority here, but I just knew I could do it. I knew I was just as good as those people or maybe better in some aspects. And there’s nothing wrong with thinking you can do a job and maybe do it better than somebody else. And then, if you really want something, you need to be knowledgeable about that specific thing. So, whatever it is, just gain all the knowledge you can prior to, or in the process of, trying to move up into a supervisor or leadership position. JR: Kind of become an expert in that thing. HS: Exactly. 11 JR: Become an authority in your own field. HS: Yeah, and don’t be afraid to ask other people, “How do you do this?” or “Why do you do this?” or “What’s the purpose behind us doing this?” All those kinds of questions because it’s going to just help you. If you’re already knowledgeable like your supervisors are before you’re even a supervisor, all that’s going to do is make you a better supervisor. JR: Lastly, are there any other insights you can share about being a woman leader in your community? HS: (laughs) I can’t think of anything else. I don’t really have anything else for that. I pretty much, you know, when I’m done here, my leadership self turns off here and I go home. I mean, I still run my house obviously, but um… I don’t know. I can’t think of anything. JR: Yeah. Awesome. OK well, thank you. Thank you so much. HS: No problem at all. 12