Youth pursues police career with passion

Margaret Cornell has known since junior high that she wanted to go into law enforcement.

She remembers watching Doug Overman, school resource officer at what was then Kalispell Junior High. He was a family friend, so Cornell knew him before she started junior high.

But it wasn’t until she saw him in action at school that she realized what an important role a police officer could play in the life of someone in trouble.

Overman wanted students to see him as a resource and tried hard to eliminate the “cops are scary” stereotype, Cornell said.

“He approached kids, talked to them, helped them out. He’s helped tons of kids out,” Cornell said.

She was impressed by the influence Overman had.

“Not that he can fix everything, but he sure does a lot to improve people’s lives,” Cornell said.

She decided she wanted to have the same positive impact on people and set her sights on a career in law enforcement.

She interned with the Kalispell Police Department while attending Flathead High School and has attended the Montana Junior Police Leadership Academy in Helena three times — twice as a student and once as an instructor.

Now a 19-year-old sophomore in Washington State University’s criminal justice program, Cornell recently was named the inaugural recipient of the Tina Delong Griswold Scholarship, created this year to honor a fallen police officer.

Cornell will be recognized at a special ceremony Sept. 21 in Airway Heights, Wash.

The $1,000 scholarship is intended to help students pursuing careers in criminal justice, law enforcement or a closely aligned field, said Tammy Gipe, a member of the scholarship selection committee and sister of the woman for whom the award was named.

Looking at Cornell, Gipe can’t help but remember her sister.

Like Cornell, Tina Griswold knew by the time she was in high school that she wanted to go into law enforcement. She never lost focus, pursuing her goal of becoming a police officer. By the time she was 40, Griswold had served for 14 years, most recently as part of a start-up police department in Lakewood, Wash.

Griswold had been with the department for five years when she and three other officers were shot and killed in a Lakewood coffee shop Nov. 29, 2009. Her untimely death left her sister determined to do something to honor Griswold’s memory.

That’s why Gipe was delighted when the National Association of Women in Criminal Justice decided in March to create the Tina Delong Griswold Scholarship. She was touched when they asked her to serve on the selection committee.

“They were so gracious to start this in my sister’s honor,” said Gipe, who has lived in the Flathead Valley for the last 25 years.

There were five scholarship applicants, Gipe said: three from the Flathead Valley and two from Washington. The committee had worried that students hadn’t received enough notification about the scholarship, she said, and weren’t sure whether they’d get much response.

They were thrilled with the people who applied, Gipe said.

“The candidates were great. There were so few that it was really hard to pick” a winner, she said.

But Gipe said Cornell stood out, in part because of her similarity to Griswold. Like Griswold, Cornell had been influenced by a school resource officer when she was young. She had the same clear sense of calling and the same drive to meet her goals.

“She just was real ... focused is the word,” Gipe said. “She’s a real determined young woman to do what she had a passion to do, and that was my sister.”

“I just felt like she best represented my sister’s heart,” Gipe added.

Cornell has not lost her focus in college.

In addition to pursuing her bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, she is an intern with the campus police department. She wears a full uniform and carries “everything but a Taser and a gun” when she responds to calls.

She said the job’s inherent dangers don’t worry her. Neither does the prospect of working in a field that historically hasn’t employed many women. After competing in Junior Olympic gymnastics for more than a decade, she said she is confident in herself and her strengths.

“I’m not really intimidated walking into a room with a bunch of boys,” she said. “You’ve just got to walk in there thinking there’s no reason you shouldn’t walk in there.”

Cornell said she doesn’t yet know what she wants to do after college. She’s considering working with a K9 unit; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; or the Drug Enforcement Administration. She eventually may pursue a career as a federal marshal.

Wherever she ends up, Cornell said she is looking forward to helping people just as she watched Overman do.

“You get to improve a lot of people’s lives,” she said. “You get to save people from going [off] the deep end — even though you can’t save everybody.”

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.