‘A role model for others’: Pocatello honors Capt. Chad Higbee’s 3-decade career in law enforcement
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POCATELLO – A career spanning over three decades came to an end on Thursday.
The city held a party for Police Capt. Chad Higbee, where his family, friends and fellow officers, as well as city and county officials, gathered to honor his career in the Pocatello Police Department. After 32 years of service, Higbee has retired from the police force.
“It’s been a wonderful career that has supported me and my family very well, and I’ve been treated very, very well by the City of Pocatello. I couldn’t ask for a better department to work for,” Higbee told the crowd, which packed into the City Council chambers in the early afternoon for the celebration.
“It may sound cliché … (but) I always wanted to be a police officer,” Higbee told EastIdahoNews.com as the celebration was winding down.
As a boy growing up in Downey, Higbee said his interactions with Bannock County sheriff’s deputies left a strong impression on him. While he had always looked up to them, he was especially impressed by one specific incident.
“We had a lost child in Downey, and they found the child, and I just – that ingrained it in me that eventually I wanted to do that,” Higbee said.
Accomplishing this goal didn’t come immediately for Higbee. Right after high school, he worked for his father at a meat processing plant for 10 years.
But he said one day his wife, Lisa Higbee, asked him, “What are you going to do when you grow up?” This prompted him to go through the training and apply to become a Pocatello police officer.
While addressing the crowd, Higbee thanked Lisa for supporting him through his career. Before they continued a tradition within the police department, where she removed his badge, he gave her a bouquet of flowers.
When she spoke, Lisa talked about the hard cases Higbee has responded to, including the murders of Nori Jones and Cassie Jo Stoddart, as well as Downard Funeral Home fraud case.
“He would come home and sit on the deck, and just sit and ponder about it. It’s hard. … They (law enforcement officers) can’t share a lot of it. They just have to be there (and be) ready to talk about it,” Lisa said.
Higbee said there were several times when he worked 20 to 30 hours straight on a case. Once the adrenaline from responding to situations like that wore off, he would sit out on the deck to decompress and try not to bring the work back home to his family.
“(I’ve) kept my work life separate from my personal life, and I’ve done that for 32 years,” Higbee said.
He said now that he and his wife no longer have any debt, he has decided it is time to dedicate all his time to his personal life and “let the new generation come forth.”
During Thursday’s ceremony, Pocatello Police Chief Roger Schei publicly thanked Higbee and all the retired officers in attendance for building the police department he leads.
“You guys helped build this department into what it is today, and the reason we’re successful is the people that are in this room that came before us,” Schei said.
When Mayor Mark Dahlquist spoke, he said that in the four and a half months he’s served as mayor he’s found Higbee to be a “pleasure” to work with, due to Higbee’s ability to be light-hearted but professional, and easy to connect with.
“You’re just a role model for others, and you’re going to be missed, and there’s a hole (left) here for sure,” Dahlquist said.