News Photo by Julie Riddle Sgt. Jim McGuire chats with office staff on his last day at work at the Alcona County Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday.

HARRISVILLE — “Everybody wants to tell the truth,” the officer said, sitting in his boss’s office on Tuesday, hours before turning in his badge. “You just have to let them.”

Sgt. Jim McGuire, a 30-plus-year veteran of the Alcona County Sheriff’s Office, knows how to listen to people.

Retiring this week after three decades in uniform, McGuire leaves behind a reputation as the guy who really knows how to conduct an interview.

Alcona County Sheriff Scott Stephenson grew up reading about McGuire’s police work and commendations in the newspaper.

As he started his own career, Stephenson related, he’d watch McGuire standing on the side of a road, leaning on a guard rail and sharing a cigarette with a suspect.

“Come back 15 or 20 minutes later and he’d have the guy confessing to something or another,” Stephenson said.

Hundreds of home invasions, where evidence was scant, were solved over the years through McGuire’s skills as an interviewer, Stephenson said.

“He would get a confession where we had nothing,” Stephenson said. “We would just watch him and marvel.”

The trick, McGuire said, is simply relating to people, making an effort to understand what they’re feeling — even if it’s an awful case, like a sexual assault of a child.

“I’ve dealt with some very sick people,” he said grimly. “You have to sit there and understand that person and keep control during that and sympathize while they’re telling the truth, but deep down — it’s pretty tough to handle.”

Police work means never knowing what to expect, McGuire said.

He’s had guns pointed at him, knives drawn against him.

He’s never had to shoot anyone, but he’s had a lot of close calls.

He almost died 20 years ago the day a suicidal man drew a gun. A side tackle by another officer saved McGuire’s life.

“It was tough to come in the next day,” McGuire said. “But you’ve got to let it go and keep going.”

An injured owl dropped off at the Sheriff’s Office some years ago, in need of care by Michigan Department of Natural Resources officers, commanded McGuire’s attention, even when an intoxicated woman barged in wielding a butcher knife.

He took the knife away, he said, and kept dealing with the owl and the DNR officers.

“When I was done I thought, this woman just tried to kill me,” he marvelled. “Didn’t even bother me. I told her, sit down and wait your turn.”

A virus-aware, scaled-back going-away party with burgers and hot dogs is more than adequate, said McGuire, who has post-retirement plans of working in a gun shop in Ossineke and giving time to camping, hunting, fishing, and his wife, he said Tuesday as he sat across a desk from the now-sheriff to whom he was a hero decades ago.

As Stephenson continued to talk, enthusing over the impact of the officer about to leave his department, McGuire just kept on listening.

Julie Riddle can be reached at 989-358-5693, jriddle@thealpenanews.com or on Twitter @jriddleX.