For Sgt. Ed Phippen, retiring after 33 years with the La Plata County Sheriff’s Office means becoming Superman – at least in the eyes of his grandchildren.

“Most of the time, everybody’s a good guy searching for bad guys,” Phippen said of his grandchildren’s games.

Phippen spent much of his professional career playing a real-life version of that kids’ game, working some of the county’s most notorious crimes. With his departure, his coworkers must solve a new case: getting by without “steady Ed.”

His last day on the job was Thursday.

La Plata County residents may know Phippen as the county’s first school-based drug prevention officer, a precursor to a school resource officer. Sports fans might recognize him as a former star on Fort Lewis College basketball team, or through his son, Sam Phippen, who also played for the college’s basketball team. Those close to him said he is a calming force, even while investigating some of the county’s most heinous crimes.

“I think it’s one of the best traits you can have as an investigator, a supervisor and as somebody you work with,” said Lt. Pat Downs, a co-worker and friend of 32 years. “You always think, ‘OK, Ed’s here. We’re going to be OK. No matter how messed up this is, or how nasty or bad it is.’”

Phippen rose from an entry-level patrol deputy to the lieutenant supervising the county’s criminal investigations team. During his 19 years in criminal investigations, Phippen saw hundreds of autopsies and “things people don’t want to see,” he said.

“You can’t be on the job without having a little bit of changes in your personality and a hardening of your heart a little bit for society because you see what evil looks like,” he said.

His cases included a double homicide south of Durango in 2000 and 12 murders in 2012. He investigated Dylan Redwine’s death, which Phippen said was probably the “most involved” murder case in the county since he started in the field.

It was a tough job – the cases involving kids affected him the most – but Ed’s soft-spoken, calm demeanor never changed, said Sherri Phippen, Ed’s wife of 37 years. (They met while working on the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad train. Ed was a conductor.)

“He still was great with the family, even though I know things bothered him,” she said. “He would just not talk about it much.”

After three decades, Phippen still believes there is good out there.

“I want to help,” he said. “That’s what the job’s about.”

Not all of his years on the force dealt with serious crimes. Before becoming an investigator, Phippen worked with kids as the county’s Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) officer. Los Angeles created the school-based drug prevention program in the 1980s as an effort to decrease drug use and gang activity.

Phippen loved working with students so much that, instead of taking lunch breaks, he would be on the playground, standing like a 6-foot-6-inch tower above the fifth and sixth graders, his wife said.

“They would just be hanging on him,” Sherri said. “We still see kids, now adults, that come up to him and say, ‘You probably don’t remember me, but you really did make a difference in my life.’ That just means so much.”

During his last week before retirement, Phippen caught himself reminiscing about his career even while training the next round of new officers.

“You start thinking about, ‘I won’t be sitting at this desk any longer. I won’t be in this car anymore,’” he said.

When Phippen joined law enforcement in the 1980s, he submitted handwritten reports and borrowed landlines to make calls while in the field. La Plata County had less crime, fewer inmates and a smaller Sheriff’s Office, mostly because fewer people lived in the county.

Now, the department sends digital reports through the cloud. The Sheriff’s Office is dealing with the coronavirus outbreak, urging the community to follow safety guidelines and working to keep La Plata County Jail inmates safe.

“You don’t always think about the things you used to do as you go through different roles in the Sheriff’s Office ... the people you’ve impacted and who changed your life in some fashion also,” Phippen said.

There are only two or three people still in the Sheriff’s Office with as much institutional knowledge as Phippen, Downs said. Professionally, that knowledge was “invaluable,” Downs said, and he will miss consulting with Phippen when faced with a big decision. But he was also a friend: Phippen was one of the first people to offer support after Downs’ father died in 2002.

“That’s the kind of guy he is,” Downs said. “I fully believe the Sheriff’s Office is going to be less for it losing somebody like Ed, but we also have good people that are stepping up.”

After decades in the Sheriff’s Office, Phippen had two pieces of advice for new officers: Be honest with yourself and your peers, and enjoy your life in Durango.

“Work so you can live, and live well,” he said. “Don’t live to work.”

smullane@durangoherald.com