County honors 31 years of service
After 31 years of service, Gilmer County Sheriff’s Office (GCSO), Deputy Lloyd “Kenny” Wiggins has seen both wonderful and terrible things.
“It’s been just a little over a week, and I miss it already,” he said.
Wiggins is Gilmer’s fourth-longest serving GCSO officer.
Before he started with the GCSO, he served as a Master-at-Arms in the U.S. Navy.
“That is basically a patrolman,” he said. “I liked what I was doing.”
After he left the Navy, Wiggins spent two years trying a number of jobs before deciding he wanted to return to law enforcement.
“There was a job opening for a jailer at the Sheriff’s office, so I applied for that and got it,” he said.
In his time in service, he reached the rank of Lieutenant before moving to work in schools.
“I wanted to be with the little children at school,” he said.
Wiggins has had good days and bad days during his time with GCSO.
Once, he saw a man at a gas station wearing a parka in summer. He had an intuition that something was wrong, so he pulled the man over.
That what when he discovered the man had committed a murder in Gwinnett County and was trying to get away.
“I got somebody off the street that didn’t need to be on the street,” Wiggins said.
There are some situations that have no saving.
He still remembers finding a young woman who worked as a nurse practitioner dead.
He also remembers pulling a dead 13-year-old girl from a burnt wreck.
Years later, he still dreams about these terrible moments.
“That will stay with me the rest of my life,” Wiggins said.
Wiggins was working the night that Deputy Sheriff Brett Dickey was murdered in the line of duty.
The support of fellow officers means everything when getting through the bad days.
“What kept me going was the camaraderie we had there at the Sheriff’s Office,” Wiggins said.
Under Sheriff Stacy Nicholson, the GCSO has built up the close bonds, loyalty and unity needed to support officers even in the worst times.
Before Nicholson, it wasn’t always that way. But the changes he made strengthened the office in countless ways, Wiggins said.
“I love the people I worked with,” he said.
GCSO officers were there for Wiggins when his wife died, he said.
“Pound for pound, it’s the best Sheriff’s Office in the state,” he said.
As an officer, Wiggins said his first goal was to “always be everybody’s best friend” as he took pride in wearing the badge.
“Don’t go so much by the book, but by the heart,” he said, quoting “The Andy Griffith Show.”
One thing people don’t understand about law enforcement is the difficulty of making split-second judgements under pressure.
“People on the outside world have got all the time in the world to sit there and second-guess us and to pass judgement on us,” Wiggins said.
America shouldn’t put the police down, he said.
Wiggins has spent his entire career in law enforcement in Gilmer County. This career path was because he wanted to serve the county that raised him.
In his retirement, Wiggins said he plans to do a lot of fishing and some travel.
Wiggins has spent the last few years as a School Resource Officer (SRO) at Clear Creek Middle School.
“The thing I’m going to miss most of all is being around my babies,” he said. “I enjoyed being around them and talking with them, and them coming up and giving me hugs.”