Storey County has a new sheriff. Michael S. Cullen took office at the beginning of this month. He says Storey County has always been a special place for him.

"I've been coming up here since I was a little kid with my parents," he said. "We moved to Nevada in 1973 and one of my dad's favorite things to do was ride dirt bikes up here from Johnson Lane and we did all the time and Virginia City has always been in our family's blood."

He moved to Virginia City with his wife six years ago and started getting to know the locals, ultimately setting his sights on the Sheriff's Office.

"I met a lot of really great folks up here in the county, and they see that they wanted that change, they knew we needed to do something different than what we'd been doing," Cullen said. "And I think they supported me for that reason; they could see I was willing to jump in and try and change stuff."

Cullen began his career in law enforcement at the Nevada State Prison in 1990 and soon moved to the Carson City Sheriff's Office.

"I joined the reserve program for a couple of years and then in 1994 I got hired on full-time as a community policing officer and worked my way up the ranks," he said. "Field training officer, detective, motors doing traffic. In 2003 I was promoted to sergeant and went after the traffic division there, and that was my main job was traffic for many years. The last six or seven years I was the administrative sergeant in Carson, running the motors and some different programs, working with volunteers, and I loved it, it was great. I enjoyed my job and I've always enjoyed law enforcement."

He retired to focus on his campaign - and now his focus is on policing a county with a unique set of challenges.

"We have a giant population out at the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center," Cullen said. "They estimate more than 20,000 people, 24 hours a day, in a county with only about 4,000 voters. So we have that to contend with, and they draw a lot of our resources. Getting our officers trained and getting them the right equipment to do the job out there and protect our county is important to me."

He also says the budget will be a top priority.

"Budgeting is very important; my job is to spend our taxpayer dollars the right way and sometimes we have to actually spend the money instead of not doing it," Cullen said. "We want to look at good ways to spend that money, and that's one of the things we've been doing first and foremost is trying to figure out how to better serve our community and spend these funds. I don't think the money has been put in the right place over the last administration's years and I want to change that."

He's also working on building up the department, which is currently down a few positions.

"We are in a recruiting stage, trying to fill some of these positions, and we're working with the county to updates some things, work on benefits to be comparable to other counties and surrounding agencies," he said. "Looking back on my career, if I could have started at a smaller, rural community - and Carson City is pretty rural - but Storey County is a great place to start, or make a career out of. You've got all kinds of neat stuff out here you can do. We have five different parts of the community that you can police and get involved with, and it's not just the policing, it's the community outreach, getting involved with the community members and the things they do."

He says his door is always open and invites citizens to reach out as this new chapter unfolds.

https://www.storeycounty.org/government/departments/sheriff/index.php