PORT ANGELES — Being able to spend more time with his family pushed Joe Hawe’s decision to retire as Clallam County sheriff although more than three years remain on his elected term of office.
Hawe’s resignation became public Monday and is effective Oct. 1.
During a telephone interview Monday, Hawe said the six months he spent away from the sheriff’s office after being called to active duty in the Coast Guard helped him realize he needed a change in his life.
“During that time, I found out there was a life after the sheriff’s department,” Hawe said.
After leaving the Sheriff’s Department, Hawe will head a statewide program to provide Internet mapping of school buildings similar to what was done in the county under the name Clallam Response.
Hawe will work for the Washington Association of Sheriff’s and Police Chiefs, which has a contract with the state for the project.
“I’m going now because they called and asked me,” Hawe said of the timing accepting the new position.
“They came to me, and the timing was right to make a change.”
One of the lures of the new job, Hawe said, was being able to work eight hours a day, five days a week.
“I want to spend more time with my family,” Hawe said.
He will work in Olympia, and he said his wife, Ginny, and son, Joe Jr., will join him there.
“I’ve given 19 years of my life to the county,” Hawe said when asked if he felt he had a responsibility to the voters and financial supporters during his election to a fourth term last year.
The rest of this story appears in Tuesday’s Peninsula Daily News.
