Meet the county official: Yow lives out lifelong dream

Editor's note: The Madill Record is going to be running a weekly segment about city and county officials in Marshall County.

Sheriff Donald Yow has been a well-known member of Marshall County his entire life. Raised in Madill, Yow proudly stated that he has been married for over 34 years to his high school sweetheart, Christie. The Yow’s have two daughters, Ashtin and Kortlyn, who are both in education.

Yow has been serving and protecting the residents of Marshall County for over three decades now. He started out at the Madill Police Department at the age of 21.

After moving up through the ranks to the police chief, he retired in 2020 to take on the role of Marshall County Sheriff.

Yow said he has had a lifelong passion to be in law enforcement and to help others. TheMadillRecord recently sat down with Sheriff Yow for a short Q&A for the Marshall County residents to get to know him.

Q: You were raised in Madill, was your family originally from here as well?

A: “My mom was raised in Kingfisher,Dover. Mygranddad worked for the railroad so he traveled where jobs were. Thenmydadwasraisedupin Ft. Worth. My dad moved to Marshall County when I was really young. Dad worked at the processing plant east of Madill and he retired there as superintendent a few years ago.”

Q: You have been in law enforcement your whole life. Did you always know you wanted to be?

A: “Oh yes, when I was five or six, you know boys didn’t play with dolls, we had action figures and so I wanted a G.I. Joe man and my dad would come home from work and would always park in the same spot. Well I grew up watching C.H.I.P.S., Adam 12, all these old police shows. And I thought, I see them writing tickets and I see people paying their tickets and I thought ha. My mom helped me. Hey, will you help me write dad a ticket if he one day he didn’t park in that spot. And she was like okay, So she did. And so I put a ticket on his window when he came home one day and didn’t park in his spot. So I thought I got you. So mom helped me put the ticket on his windshield and he went to work the next morning. When he came home I was outside playing or whatever and he had to go somewhere. My mom said hey you need to come in here and I’m like alright and so I go in and she says look under your pillow. So I looked under my pillow, and I think I charged him $5 and so he said paid in full and gave me a five dollar bill, and of course back then that was a lot of money. So I go to get my G.I.Joe.ItelleverybodyIhave worked one time, I tried it other times.”

Q: Tell our readers about the Citizens Academy program that you have coming up next month.

A: “Citizens Academy is March 7th and it will teach our citizens why the Sheriff’s office does things in a certain way that we have to do, not only for court purposes, but to make sure we are covering ourselves and our citizens by doing it that way. It gives them an insight of exactly what we do on a day to day basis. It helps them to understand the laws both civil and criminal. We also go through some training that we do. The Sheriff’s office was able to purchase a shooting simulator. So we will put them through that. We will also have a day out on the range that they can do. I don't do ride alongs. And the reason I don’t do that is because I can’t guarantee safety. It’s an eight week course,one night a week usually about 6 to 8. It will also include some courtroom stuff in there so they understand how some the court system works. It's very educational. It really opens eyes. It’s free to anyone who wants to participate. They can come by the Sheriff’s office to fill out an application.”

Q: Have you noticed the decrease of crime in the county over the last few years.

A: “I like keeping stats on this and numbers are a hard thing to talk about. This is what is say, if you throw a number out there and something changes you have to respond withwhydiditchange. Our theft we have like every other county in the state, we do have theft that goes on. In fact one of our businesses just got broke into, the Dollar General. Deputies have already got the arrest made. We just haven’t put that out there yet, cause they are still tying up a few loose ends on it. But we’re setting at about an 85-86% closer rate on every that comes into the Sheriff’s office. Our drug arrests are up and that goes along with a lot of traffic that we work. Of course we get traffic complaints allthetime.Whichwe need to know those things, we may have to set up in different areas. And we do that. My guys make traffic stops and that leads to bigger things. But it also catches some of our drug people that are running through. So that is quite a bit and if you look at our numbers over half the arreststhatweremadeinour county the Sheriff’s office is making those.”

Q: Please tell our readers anything that you would like them to know, as far as your vision of the future of Marshall County.

A: “I want to keep up with our growth and ways to do that is more deputies on patrol. One of the things that I am wanting to do and I have to have a certain number of deputies to do it. Is to divide our county into three sections and have 24 hour patrol in those three sections. To wheretheycanstillbackeach other up but as soon as they are done with that then they are back in their area. I’ve got three deputies on at one time and they are doing nothing but circling those areas. And it also helps if they see someone out talking they can stop and see what all is going onandtheygetmorepersonal and they get to know who that deputy is. I may pick up one of those areas, and they will get to know me even better. Because now when you dive somewhere and you see something it might not look suspicious to us, but if you live there it might not look right. So that will help us, that looks out of the ordinary. Let'sstopandcheckthat.And that will be more of a service to our county.