La Salle County sheriff: ‘I’ve loved this job for 50 years’

He had never dreamed of being sheriff. Sure, Tom Templeton had loved being an officer and wouldn’t shrink from taking charge when required, but his deepest wish was to be a La Salle County investigator, not to hold the head office.

That held true until 1998. Then-Sheriff Tony Condie had announced he wouldn’t run again and Templeton knew the sheriff’s office had a lengthy to-do list: A new jail, a larger force, better technology, most of all, an experienced hand to oversee the growth.

“This is my platform,” then-Capt. Tom Templeton, 46, told a group of prospective voters, holding aloft not a wishlist but his resume. He’d done it all — patrolman, corrections officer, investigator, supervisor — and told voters it was experience that would bring the sheriff’s office into the 21st century. He sold the voters, but just barely: He squeaked past Democrat Dan Sedlock with a 4% margin.

The jail was constructed. The force has quadrupled in size. Enhanced-911 is just one of the technological improvements he’s installed. And now there’ll be a new sheriff.

Templeton, 70, had pledged his current term would be the last and decided recently he wouldn’t finish it. Vaguely citing a confluence of personal issues, Templeton will pass the baton Wednesday to Undersheriff Adam Diss.

“The old saying is, ‘Leave it better than when you found it,’ ” Templeton said, reflecting on his nearly 50 years in the sheriff’s office, 23 at the helm. “And I don’t want to say that Tony had left things badly, it’s just that we were in a time of change. Things were changing in the country and in the state and we made those changes. We caught up with what we needed to catch up with.”

Now it’s time to catch his breath. Asked if he welcomed retirement or dreaded it, he quipped, “Uh, yes. Next question?”

“It’s all I know what to do,” he shrugged. “The only thing I’ve done since leaving the service is law enforcement. So 50 years worth is hard to walk away from. Is it time? Yeah. I think we all know when it’s time.”

But he added later, “I’ve loved this job for 50 years. I loved it when I walked in the first day. I love it today and I’ll love it on the last day.”

The DePue native had graduated from Hall High School and played for the Red Devils football team, which had agreed to test a new sport drink. Gatorade wasn’t flavored in the late 1960s and the taste made Templeton gag; but orders were orders and he managed to hold it down. He responded well to chain-of-command and gravitated naturally into the U.S. Air Force and then policing in Peoria County.

“I liked the regimented lifestyle — I still do,” Templeton said. “I liked the fact that everyone has their mission. There’s so much togetherness, so much camaraderie, and law enforcement is a paramilitary institution.”

When alerted to an opening in the La Salle County Sheriff’s Office in 1973, he put in for the job. He was keen to be closer to his recently-widowed mother, still at home caring for his two much-younger siblings.

The job was demanding, but he never complained. It was not uncommon for him to complete a shift and be asked to fill in for an absent corrections officer or to fetch a suspect from another county’s jail. The workload ratcheted up as he began shadowing the county’s detective unit, hoping to learn the nuances of investigation.

“You worked and you worked as many hours as you needed to work as the bosses told you to work and that was the size of it,” Templeton recalled. “I was happy to do it. I couldn’t get enough of this job. The needs of the agency comes first.”

It came at a price. Early in his La Salle County career he married Cheryl, with whom he has two children, and who bore his long absences patiently. Yet Templeton still chafes at the memory of when his son, T.J., wished aloud he’d had a “normal father” who could be at all the ball games and school plays.

“He always did everything he could for us,” T.J. Templeton said now. “Even being super busy he always made time for us. We’re super happy to have him more to ourselves than we have in the past. He’ll get to spend time with his grandchildren, which is the light at the end of the tunnel for him.”

Templeton’s work ethic won the respect of his peers and his supervisors, who eventually gave him a detective’s shield. Investigator Herb Klein, one of Templeton’s mentors, died in 1986 but his son, Peru attorney Herb Klein, remembered them working closely together in an era when there weren’t specialized units, such as crime scene services.

“So they really did it all,” said Klein, himself a friend of Templeton’s. “Whenever there was a serious crime or they thought they were apprehending someone dangerous, my dad wanted Tom with him. My father — and I — valued greatly Tom’s honesty and integrity. It’s a very difficult job being sheriff and I think Tom has done it as well anybody could have expected.”

By the time Condie retired, the jail was badly in need of an update and the county had seen an influx of female inmates, for whom there was no segregated unit. Templeton shakes his head at the memory of the lone “cell” fashioned for the occasional woman ordered into custody: A converted storeroom enclosed in chicken wire, sealed with a padlock and monitored by deputies’ wives serving as matrons.

He trumpeted these needs on the ’98 campaign trail and prevailed, but readily acknowledged his Election Night jitters, unsure what he’d do if Sedlock won.

“I had 25 years in and I had a pension locked up, but I wasn’t old enough to retire,” he recalled. “So I was going to look for another job in law enforcement if I couldn’t sit down with Dan and come up with a viable situation for both of us.”

Templeton credits his longevity to the fact he tried to be fair, both to his subordinates and to those on the other side of the aisle. Though a lifelong Republican, he maintained cordial relations with many Democrats and cultivated a strong working relationship with La Salle County’s longtime board chairman, the late Joe Hettel.

Hettel’s son, La Salle County Circuit Judge Joseph P. Hettel, recalled Templeton and his father were moderates who shared Templeton’s vision for the sheriff’s office. The younger Hettel built a similar rapport during his six years as state’s attorney and found Templeton to be a good listener with a sense of humor.

“What kind of draws you to Tom is his empathy and his ability to see other perspectives,” Judge Hettel said. “As a person, he’s not afraid to reveal what he’s feeling. He was able to deal with the pressures of the job but still able to maintain his genuineness and not let that pressure overcome who he is.”

Templeton’s tenure not only was long but also eventful. He played big roles in the apprehension and conviction of serial killer Brian Dugan and double-murderer Keith Mackowiak. He steered the county through tumultuous events such as the deadly 2004 tornado in Utica and the Dana Holmes strip case that resulted in a county settlement.

Templeton admits he wasn’t sure he’d last 10 years as sheriff, much less make it past 20. He reasoned by the time he’d reached double-digit service years, he’d have jailed too many constituents to harbor any realistic hope at the polls.

There, he was wrong. Democrats appreciated the stability and professionalism he’d brought to the sheriff’s office and didn’t recruit campaign opponents, once even trying to dissuade a challenger from running. Templeton mounted each election certificate behind his desk so they’d be the first things he’d see walking in each morning.

“It was to remind me not that I got elected six times, but that I was allowed to work here six different times by the people. And that is grounding to me.”