Scott Swanson
Jim Yon was a senior in college, interning for the Linn County Sheriff’s Office in the spring of 1993, when he discovered his dream job.
Right there.
“I knew early in life that (law enforcement) was what I wanted to do,” said Yon, now 51. “I had to do a practicum. Dave Burright was the undersheriff at the time, and I did it at the Sheriff’s Office. I knew within a couple of days that that was the place for me.”
Yon started working for LCSO the following year, as a deputy, and he stayed 27 years – until he retired Jan. 1 after three years as Linn County Sheriff, the only Sweet Home resident to hold that position.
Although Yon’s parents were both teachers, he said he had “a lot of exposure” to law enforcement growing up. That was particularly true when he attended South Albany High School, where his girlfriend Angie Stevenson, now his wife, was Burright’s cousin, and her uncle was assistant police chief in Corvallis. Angie’s brother Frank is now Lebanon’s police chief.
Yon said he considered following in his parents’ footsteps and becoming a teacher, but his father warned him that there’s a lot of criticism that comes with teaching.
He decided to study criminal justice at Western Oregon University, where his brother Scott – now retired from the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office – was enrolled and playing football.
Yon said for a brief moment, he “was the worst college football player in America. “I had been a kicker and they needed somebody, so I walked on and tried to play as a guard,” Yon said. “I was terrible, but it was interesting.”
After earning his degree in 1993, Yon worked one summer at National Frozen Foods and then applied for a job when one came open at LCSO.
He started as resident deputy in Harrisburg, where he spent three years before moving to the main office in Albany in 1997, working as a criminal deputy and then moving up two years later to the detectives bureau, where he investigated sex crimes.
Yon then was promoted to corporal, running the traffic team before moving up to first sergeant in 2005. In 2009 he transferred back into the detectives unit as detectives sergeant, overseeing property and narcotics investigations.
“That was the best time of my career,” he said. “Whenever we had a murder or something like that, I always ran the operations, collection of evidence and that stuff.
“That was the stuff I always enjoyed. It was fun walking through a grow out in the forest, doing search warrants, trying to make a difference in the supply of drugs. It was fun, interesting work. Homicides are awful, but for us that’s the ultimate investigation to be part of. You really want to clear the case for the family.”
Meanwhile, his own family was growing – older, anyway. Angie had been teaching at Foster School in Sweet Home for about a decade and his son Ryan was attending school locally, even though the family still lived in Albany.
“Our kids were getting older,” he recalled. “We’d both gone to Albany schools, but Angie loved the schools up here. So she started bringing Ryan up here. Ultimately, that’s why we moved here.”
They took up residence in Sweet Home in 2005. The Yons got involved in local youth swimming, in which Ryan and their daughter Lauren, who went on to swim at the Division I level at Oregon State University, participated, both eventually swimming for Sweet Home High School.
By 2012 Yon was support services captain, managing evidence, IT, dispatch, purchasing, fleet maintenance – “literally everything that makes the office go.”
“That was a hard job,” he recalled. “When I went in there were radios in there that were working, that had been there longer than I had. This was during the economic downturn. We didn’t have money.”
But, he added, “I learned how everything works.”
Yon said technology has changed the job, good and bad.
“It’s helpful to have instant access in the field, but people have cell phones and they start posting things on social media – sometimes convicting someone – long before we have all of the information,” he said.
That instant access to a public forum is changing society, he said.
“People don’t like being told no. That’s what we do. We hold the line. We are country of laws and rules and (law enforcement officers) are the ones that enforce that.
“Decency is going away. I think people need to look within themselves, determine what is good and right and act appropriately.”
Yon blames social media for much of the rancor he says is out there.
“Social media warriors can say or do whatever they want without repercussions. They hurt people.
“I’ve been cussed out more in last two years than during the rest of my career combined.”
Ten minutes after his retirement, at 12:10 a.m. on Jan. 1, Yon deleted his Facebook page, he said.
“I probably will never go back to Facebook.”
But the basics of police work have not changed.
“When I was in Harrisburg, I was supposed to get to know people, to know the owner of the local hardware store and for them to know me,” Yon said. “That’s true today as well. It helps them and it helps us.”
And he added, proudly, “We still answer every call.”
In 2014 Bruce Riley became sheriff, with the retirement of Tim Mueller, and Yon was named undersheriff. When Riley stepped down in 2018, Yon moved up to the top. He was elected to a four-year term in November 2018.
“Each one of these steps taught me something that I needed to know to do the job; they prepared me to be sheriff,” he said. “You have to have the answer, because when it’s going sideways, everybody looks to you for direction. You have to know what to do.”
Yon said he set his sights on becoming sheriff early in his career.
“I have always liked being part of making decisions,” he said. “I just did my best in every position. I got a good view of what it’s like from Dave and Frank. Of course, timing plays a big role, but I’m grateful to have had the opportunity.”
“It’s bittersweet,” Yon said of his retirement. “I have made a lot of great relationships over the years.”
He’s leaving with a lot of memories.
“One that will never be topped was in the mid-90s, when I got dispatched to Brownsville for an ‘orangutan at large.’ Herbie, the orangutan.”
A local family had three of the apes and the male had escaped.
“I was talking to the owner and we were getting tips from townspeople about his sightings,” Yon recalled. “The owner warned me the orangutan was full-grown and could literally rip your arm off your body.”
Yon and the owner soon located Herbie, about 10 blocks from home, but he refused to go along peaceably.
“Luckily, there was a kid’s scooter lying there. That sucker got on the scooter and rode that thing all the way home. We just walked beside him, just walked back to the house. There was a huge crowd of people there. This is not something you see every day.
“I got a lot of weird animal calls.”
One time a woman reported someone was trying to break into her home.
“It turned out to be a woodpecker hammering on the garage,” Yon said with a grin.
Then there was the elderly woman who had a bat in her house. She called the Sheriff’s Office.
“I had to get the bat out of her house. I was named South County animal control specialist because I always got weird things like that.”
There were also tragedies: the father in Harrisburg who, suffering from “mental health issues,” killed his son at Christmas time.
“One of the most horrific scenes I’ve ever been at,” Yon said.
He still makes an annual visit to the site of a car crash that claimed a Stayton High School student’s life, the car rolling on Ridge Road as the driver tried to avoid a dog.
“I get out there every May and just sit there for a while,” Yon said.
He recalls his initiation to the Sheriff’s Dive Team, in which he was also active.
“My very first dive for recovery was at Foster Dam, when a vehicle went into the water in front of the dam. You could hear the water going through and you could think of yourself getting sucked into that grate.
“I thought, ‘What the heck am I doing?’ But it gave closure to the family to retrieve that vehicle.”
Now that he’s retired, Yon said he plans to take January off, then go back to work – “maybe get back into the profession somewhere in a lesser role. It will just have to be the right fit, less stress. We’ll see.”
The Yons enjoy camping and plan to do more traveling domestically and internationally.
He said it will be different not having a patrol car in his driveway for the first time in three decades.
“I got to do a lot of great stuff over a lot of years,” Yon said. “What a ride. I wouldn’t change a thing. I’m proud that, as Sheriff, I didn’t succumb to political pressure. Citizens want you to do things.
“But right is right and wrong is wrong.
“Linn County has been a great place to work. I’m proud of how I did it. I have no regrets.”