Probation officer reflects on 'blessed' life

On Friday, his last day of work as a probation and parole officer, there was one set of words Paul Parrish kept repeating over and over again.

“I am so blessed,” Parrish said, many times, after talking about the life he’s built while serving 35 years as a probation officer in Nevada and in Flathead Valley.

Parrish found himself in Las Vegas in the late 1970s, after a childhood of traveling the United States and foreign countries as the son of a naval aviator. He was a few years into a business major when he ended up unemployed, and decided to apply for job at a mental health facility.

Parrish said he arrived 10 minutes early for his interview, but after he was buzzed into the locked facility for the interview, he was not greeted by staff.

“He was huge,” Parrish said. “He was a patient and the first thing out of his mouth was, ‘you wanna fight?’”

Parrish had to think of a quick response.

“And I said, ‘I’d rather play checkers,’” Parrish said.

The patient threw his arm around Parrish and said “Ok, good buddy,” and walked him into the room to play checkers.

Parrish was sweating about how to get out of that situation and to his interview on time. Luckily his boss had been watching the entire thing play out. After he extricated himself, the boss told him he had passed the interview portion of the job screening, and hired him on the spot.

The staff at the mental health facility became Parrish’s first mentors in the field.

“And I just figured that this was where I was supposed to be,” Parrish said.

From there Parrish went to a facility for mentally troubled criminals, mostly rapists and murderers. He eventually ended up as a probation officer in Las Vegas, where he worked for 20 years, before moving to the Flathead Valley and taking up the job here.

Parrish said in working with the mentally ill and with probationers, there are two important qualities to have. One is a personal awareness of his surrounds for safety. The other is the ability to be understanding.

“You have to be able to listen without judging,” Parrish said.

That is something that probationers Robby Robinson and Ty Couch said they appreciate most about working with Parrish.

Robinson said he has had multiple probation officers before, but none of them made a difference in his life as much as Parrish, who he’s worked with for a couple of years.

“Mr. Paul doesn’t let you bring any of that past stuff with you,” Robinson said. “He said, ‘I don’t judge whatever you’ve done in the past.’ ... He’s changed my life. He’s treated me like a son.”

Robinson said he was living in a hotel room when he and Parrish started working together. Now, he has a place of his own to call home.

“He’s built my confidence to heights I never thought it would get,” Robinson said.

Robinson didn’t quite tear up as he spoke of all that Parrish had done for him, but his voice quivered a bit.

“Not many people can say they look forward to going to see their probation officer, but I do,” Robinson said. “He’s just one of the greatest men I’ve ever had a chance of knowing.”

Couch said that Parrish went far out the way to help him get signed up for free classes and other services to help him keep his life on track.

“He’s a good man,” Couch said.

PARRISH said his job is mostly two-pronged. His main objective is to make sure each felony probationers complies with the 30 or more conditions set forth by a judge as part of the sentence. While doing that, Parrish also wants to form a positive personal relationship with each of his probationers.

“When you develop a relationship, it creates a sense of honesty and trust and it makes your job so much easier,” Parrish said. “Listening and building a relationship is paramount, outside what the court orders you to do.”

Probation officers can have immense influence in a felon’s life. Among the things they can approve or not approve is where a person lives, where they work, whether or not they have to be drug tested and obtain chemical dependency treatment. Probationers are also generally prohibited from consuming drugs and alcohol.

Parrish clarified that he can’t take care of landlord-tenant issues or investigate new possible charges, although people often think he can. Those problems are left to the civil courts, police, and county attorneys office.

“The main thing is holding them accountable, for both good behavior and bad,” Parrish said.

Completion of some of the most basic tasks can be difficult for some. A lot of probationers suffer from addiction issues or mental health problems that can make following the conditions of release a lot more difficult than for fully-functioning adults.

“There’s a certain amount of they are going to make mistakes,” Parrish said. “It’s a matter of at what point do they make enough mistakes that I have to send them back to the court?”

Parrish said he had little leniency for probationers who commit new offenses that endanger the community, particularly driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. In a recent case he recommended a man go straight to prison from a first try on felony probation, because the heroin-dealing probationer had allegedly driven an 18-wheeler while high on meth, and had blatantly disregarded the rules of supervision. But in other cases of more minor offenses, Parrish tried to give a little more grace.

“If you are going to be a probation officer, you have to believe in second chances,” Parrish said. “And oftentimes, third and fourth chances, too.”

The people of the Flathead Valley are an incredibly understanding group, Parrish said. He told one story of a probationer that had gotten out of prison after decades behind bars for a horrific murder committed as a teen. The probationer had never used a cell phone, or computer. He was entering a completely different world from where he had spent most of his life. The one skill he did have was a mechanical skills certification he had picked up while incarcerated. It was tough for the man to find a job, but Parrish went to bat for the man when a potential employer called, and explained that he had been a model prisoner, and now appeared to be a completely different person when he was originally imprisoned. The employer gave the man a job, and it made a huge difference in his life, Parrish said.

Just before his retirement, Parrish was in charge of handling around 85 of the approximately 800 probationers under supervision of the Kalispell office. As of today he’ll be a little less busy, with more time to spend with his wife Pennie and his son. He intends to devote more time to volunteering with his church in the quiet mountain town that pulled him away from Vegas many years ago.

“I never want to leave,” Parrish said. “I don’t know anyone who has been more blessed than I have. I had a dream and it came about. Whitefish has been good to us.”

Reporter Megan Strickland can be reached at 758-4459 or mstrickland@dailyinterlake.com.