Palmer public safety director reflects on long career

PALMER — With the city of Palmer’s Director of Public Safety, Jon Owen, there’s always a story.

Director Owen has been with the city of Palmer since early 2004, serving first as an evidence technician, then overseeing city employees’ National Incident Management System training before being appointed the city’s first public safety director in 2008.

As director, Owen said he ensures that the local police and fire departments “have a unified response, particularly when we train for what’s called All Hazards Emergencies,” which covers both natural and man-made disasters. He also acts as risk manager, reviewing insurance policies and safety measures that involve the city.

Now, Owen is talking about retirement, though he hasn’t picked out a specific date yet.

The son of a minister, Owen grew up in the South, and mostly in Texas. After graduating from college, he attended Dallas Theological Seminary and obtained a four-year master’s degree in Languages of the Ancient Near East. He ended up in law enforcement, however, as a result of his admiration for his 10-years-older brother, Larry, a Vietnam veteran and then police officer. After being shot in the leg in the line of duty as a cop in a particularly rough part of Dallas — read more in a Jan. 6, 2008, Frontiersman story online at bit.ly/1E9xxsU — he and his wife Rose decided it was time for a change.

But there were things Owen had seen in Texas that he would never forget.

For example, in 1989, Owen came across a car wreck on interstate highway 35, while he was in uniform. A man driving a Cadillac struck a small Chevy — a Vega or a Chevette, Owen said — from behind, allegedly at 100 mph. The Chevy had been flipped upside down into the median, and Owen said he pulled up just as the car caught fire.

Inside the burning car was a couple on their way back from San Antonio, shortly after their honeymoon, with two small children. Owen was able to cut the woman free, then remove her 2-year-old daughter — who had been launched out of her car seat — from the vehicle. Owen performed CPR on the child, but was unsuccessful.

“She died in my arms,” Owen said quietly.

It was too late for the man and his son, as well.

“I watched her stepdad and his son burn to death,” Owen said.

Owen received the Medal of Valor for his conduct during the incident, he said, but it was impossible to really feel good about it.

“People don’t realize the job stays with you forever, certain things do,” he said, in the context of the car wreck. “Certain things I’ll always take with me.”

Owen said he lost many friends who were killed in the line of duty in Dallas, and still visits the National Law Enforcement Memorial in Washington, D.C., every few years to see their names etched in stone.

But Owen has positive experiences from being in law enforcement, too. In 1993, two years after he was shot, the Owens moved to Barrow to work for the North Slope Police Department. They left Dallas on a Friday, and the following Monday, Jon joined his brother at work as a police officer and his wife as a correctional officer north of the Arctic Circle.

At NSPD, Owen oversaw activity in several outlying villages, in addition to the North Slope community. Working with, for and around the Inupiat people, Owen said he found that policing, and indeed living, was much different up North.

Culturally, he learned to look at his feet when speaking to an elder, as a gesture of humility. He also learned to take his gloves off when shaking hands with an Inupiat Eskimo, as a sign of respect — even at 40 degrees below zero.

“We were greatly enriched by living with the Inupiat Eskimos, enriched and blessed,” Owen said.

“Every police officer, I think, should have to police in a different culture at some point in their career,” he said.

He learned a lot about himself, too, which was apparently no surprise to his co-workers who had already lived there for a significant amount of time.

“They say when you step off the plane in Barrow, the first person you meet is yourself, and that’s true,” he said.

Apparently, he grew to like what he saw, as he and his wife stayed on the in Barrow for 11 years. He left the department as a lieutenant only when his brother’s health was declining as a result of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

That was at the end of 2003. The Owens moved to Palmer, and in early 2004, Jon began the evidence technician position. Jon’s brother passed away a year or two later.

His faith has helped him realize many things in his life, he said, as well as help him to deal with the loss of his brother.

“Every day is a gift from God,” he said. “Being shot in the line of duty taught me that.”

In some ways, his faith also dictates his conduct in the field. By recognizing each person as someone created in the image of God, “regardless of anything,” he said, he’s made sure to check his treatment of other people, and determine whether he has afforded them the dignity they deserve.

Perhaps this self-reflection works similarly in his direction of the Department of Public Safety. In and out of the office, Owen said he believes in an inverted pyramid of leadership.

“Ideally, our management is all working to support these dispatchers, firefighters and police officers who are providing services to the community,” he said. “They are there to keep the public safe.”

That structure so far seems to be working, at least in terms of maintaining positive, healthy relationships between public safety and city and state staff, and the community.

Current Palmer City Manager Joe Hannan said he also has been pleased with Owen’s personable, yet professional, conduct.

“It’s not hard to say some good things about him,” Hannan said by phone.

Although Hannan only started as city manager about six months ago, he said he has it on good authority that Owen has been hugely helpful transitioning new employees — such as the fire chief in 2009 — and encouraging camaraderie among all employees.

“He came into a brand new position and he just made that work,” Hannan said. “That’s a big deal.”

As far as community involvement, Hannan mentioned the Santa Cop and Heroes program as one Owen played a significant part in starting in the Valley. The program’s mission is “to provide gifts, food, and companionship to local Valley seniors on Christmas day who do not have family or who do not have resources to make this day a reason to celebrate,” according to its website.

Former Palmer City Manager Bill Allen also spoke highly of his friend.

“When I was in office, he served the city well and I was very pleased with his performance,” Allen said by cell phone.

Owen also served as the Palmer public works director and airport manager during a time in 2009 when a controversy arose surrounding the school district’s Nutrition Center. The Federal Aviation Administration had purchased the land where the center was built, when the Palmer airport was established. The difficulty with the federal agency came after the city leased the land to the school district at a rate below FAA requirements.

It wasn’t exactly in Owen’s job description to take care of land compliance issues, but with his background in mitigation and negotiations, Allen said, he graciously took up the case.

“There were a couple issues that involved the city that I, or certainly the city manger’s office, did not have the expertise to handle, (so) I called Jon,” Allen said, reflecting on their years working together.

The situation was resolved by 2012, and Owen remained Director of Public Safety.

“He has many skills and is a very likeable person,” Allen said, of Owen. “He takes his job very seriously and demands the respect of his colleagues.”

In his free time, Owen said he enjoys fly-fishing and tying flies, and may pick up golf after he retires. He also is an active member on the executive board of the Alaska Association of Chiefs of Police and more recently as part of the Alaska Seismic Hazards Safety Commission.

One of his favorite bits of advice, tacked to his office wall, comes from former Seattle Times journalist Jane Catherine Lotter. Every day, he reads a portion of her self-written obituary, published after her death last year.

“May you, every day, connect with the brilliancy of your own spirit,” Lotter writes to her children. “And may you always remember that obstacles in the path are not obstacles, they ARE the path.”

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.