New Oklahoma state troopers get on the road to new career

BRIAN KIMBALL Comments 2
Published: June 27, 2009

SPENCER — After a 17-week stint at the Oklahoma Highway Patrol training academy, dreams became reality for 25 new troopers at a graduation ceremony Friday for the academy’s 59th edition.

Multimedia

NewsOK Related Articles

Budget cuts will curb plans for 2010 Oklahoma...
06/27/2009 SPENCER — The Oklahoma Highway Patrol will not conduct a trooper academy next year, officials said Friday after 25 new troopers received their badges...

"I felt like even in the academy, I was living a dream. I can’t help it, I still feel like it was a dream,” said trooper Trinity Simmons. "I feel like I’m going to have to wake up in the morning and pinch myself and say, ‘Oh, I’ve got to do it all over again,’ but it’s really an honor to be working with all these people.”

Simmons, a resident of Mangum, said she knew she wanted to be a trooper from a young age. She was picked up by a trooper as a youngster and got a ride home from school on her birthday, and "we stopped a couple of cars, and that was it. I was sold after that,” Simmons said.

She was the lone female in the graduating class.

What was toughest?

For one man, being a state trooper seemed to be inevitable. Charles Smith, 40, spent more than 20 years in the U.S. Marine Corps before fulfilling his lifelong dream of becoming a state trooper.

"I did my first four years and was thinking about getting out, and they approved my re-enlistment right after the first Gulf War, so I was still motivated about being a Marine,” Smith said. "Actually, the last part of my enlistment, I was doing the enrollment process (for becoming a state trooper).”

The physical toll of the academy wasn’t the toughest part, Smith said. It was being away from his family for several months.

"It was long,” he said, also reflecting on the difference in seasons between the start and end of the academy.

"It was spitting ice at us when we went, and it’s 101 degrees” now, Smith said.

But regardless of what the most difficult part of going through the academy was, there was a consensus on the best part: the prestige of becoming a state trooper.

"Everybody knows us. Everybody knows what we stand for,” Smith said. "I guess the title of being a state trooper pretty much speaks for itself. There’s a lot of respect that goes along with that.”