By Katie Scarvey
Salisbury Post
A parole and probation officer for 30 years, Gary Cox tells a story that illustrates perfectly the calm, effective way he handled difficult situations.
When he was working in Roanoke Rapids in the late 1970s, one of his parolees was required to get a job within 14 days or he’d have to go back to prison.
At the end of the two weeks, the young man did not have a job but didn’t want to return to prison, Cox says. After failing to turn himself in right away, he was classified as an escapee. Cox couldn’t find him right away, so a prison official sprang into action, bringing several armed guards to search for the man.
Cox was pretty sure that he wasn’t going to show his face. After five hours of searching, Cox told the official that he’d find the man the next day on his own.
On a tip from the young man’s father, Cox went to the home of the man’s grandmother, who looked Cox in the eye and said, “He’s not here” ó while pointing to the bed where her grandson was hiding.
Instead of storming in for the arrest Cox chose to simply sit down on the bed and talk with the grandmother, knowing that the parolee would hear him. He explained that her grandson would be in a lot of trouble if he didn’t turn himself in.
Finally, the young man yelled from underneath the bed, “If I come out, will you take me back?”
Cox did take him back ó and he remembers that when he returned the young man to custody, a prison official threw him up against the wall and put handcuffs on him, warning him that he would be charged as an escapee and get extra time added to his sentence. Cox argued that the young man had voluntarily turned himself in, that there was no need to treat him like an escapee.
For 30 years, Cox treated his parolees and probationers with the same measure of respect.
The Andy of Mayberry method, if you will.
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A career in corrections wasn’t the path that Gary Cox had envisioned for himself when he was in college.
A speech and theatre major at Tennessee Wesleyan who also studied speech and theatre in a master’s program at the University of Tennessee, Cox wanted to be a professor. But when he realized that he would need a
doctorate to be able to do that, he chose a radically different career path ó as a parole and probation officer.
It suited him. And he got his dose of drama, too ó though not exactly in the way he’d envisioned when he was in school.
“I loved my job,” Cox says.
Recently, Cox retired after serving 30 years as an officer. He went out on a high note, being inducted into the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, which is the highest civilian honor that can be granted in North Carolina.
District manager of the Division of Community Corrections Rose Cox ó no relation ó nominated Cox for the prestigious award. She’s worked with him for 24 years and says he’s one of the most dedicated and loyal employees she’s ever worked with, displaying a great work ethic and loyalty to the department ó as well as loyalty to offenders.
He’s also played a valuable role in training new employees and conveying the department’s mission to them, she says.
Michael Oney, a surveillance officer who has worked with Cox at the Division of Community Corrections for 13 years, says that Cox is adept at dealing with problems and people.
“He’s just marvelous,” Oney says. “He’s a great guy who really cares about people. I don’t think you’ve ever seen an effort better than the one Gary Cox has given.”
Cox always did his job with a light touch, Oney says, preferring to work with probationers and parolees and treat them with respect and understanding ó which is not the approach everyone takes to the job, Oney adds.
“More than anything, he listens. That’s a quality that’s kind of being lost these days.”
Cox would agree that doing the job well entails a lot of attentive listening.
Parolees and probationers would often call him at home if they were drinking or depressed.
Even if it took hours, “You’d just have to talk them through,” Cox says.
“I tried to treat people as kindly as I could,” he says. “I treated everyone like they’re important ó and they are.”
He’s seen some officers ń not a lot, but some ó who tend to be negative and critical in their approach to probationers.
“That doesn’t accomplish anything positive,” he says.
If he could give new officers advice, some of the most important would be, “Be respectful and kind, and people will treat you that way in return.”
Probationers “are still people, and people make mistakes.”
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Cox and his wife Lugene moved from Tennessee to North Carolina in 1977 to be closer to Lugene’s mother, who lived in Charlotte. Cox began his corrections career that year in Roanoke Rapids in a position then known as a “field service counselor” ó a probation officer. Back then, parole offices were located in the prisons.
Cox got four weeks of training and was then expected to figure out how to organize his office ó the first one in Roanoke Rapids, which would be responsible for five counties. He took to that challenge, and enjoyed the freedom it provided.
In 1979, he and his family moved to Salisbury, where he remained for the rest of his career.
During a 30-year career in corrections, bad things are bound to happen, and Cox has seen his share.
Three of his parolees have ended up on death row for committing vicious crimes.
“Whenever you have a situation where someone gets hurt or killed, even if you know you couldn’t prevent it … there’s a certain amount of guilt,” he says.
And that does take a toll.
“You just have to work through the stress,” he says. “You cry a little; you feel bad. You beat yourself up some.”
Still, he says, he never let the bad things eat him up; he was always able to work through his emotions and “find the positives in little things.”
It was often frustrating to deal with probationers’ skewed priorities.
He remembers a 17-year-old, for example, who told him, “My brothers are gonna get me a gun when I’m 18.”
Cox said he didn’t understand, since the teenager was an only child. He meant his gang brothers, he told Cox.
“That was his aspiration,” Cox says. “To have a gun.”
In his characteristically kind way, Cox says he’s seen a lot of “unintelligent” self-destructive behavior.
One of his probationers walked to the grocery store to get wine one night, he recalls, so drunk that he did not realize he was outside barefoot during an ice storm.
Because of severe frostbite that turned into gangrene, both his feet had to be amputated.
“You see a lot,” Cox says.
He says he knew it was time to think about leaving when he began to see in his case load children of offenders he’d dealt with ó a second generation of offenders.
“It’s hard to see the same cycle continue,” he says.
Over the years, Cox says, the job of a probation/parole officer has gotten more violent, as gangs are becoming more active.
When Cox began his career in 1977, he was not issued any safety equipment. When he retired several weeks ago, he turned in a gun and a bullet-proof vest.
“Certain case loads are extremely scary,” he says, particularly those that focus on gang members and sexual offenders. “If anybody says that there are not any gangs in Rowan County, they’re fooling themselves.”
He believes surveillance officers have it particularly tough, putting themselves in danger every time they go into homes to do curfew checks ó which they do every night. “I don’t think the community really has any idea what they do,” Cox says. “And I don’t know that the state really respects some of the things they do.”
Cox says that the pendulum swings back and forth in North Carolina between a focus on treatment-oriented enforcement and compliance.
In the past, Cox has led classes such as Rational Behavior Training; now, he says, most of the counseling component is handled by outside sources.
Parolees typically behave impulsively, Cox says, without thinking of consequences. His goal was always to try to get them to “sit back and think.” Although he wasn’t always able to get through to probationers, Cox made a difference in many lives.
He recalls one young man who hadn’t finished high school when he got out of a youth facility. Cox rode herd on him, making sure he attended tutoring sessions and kept out of trouble. Cox helped him fill out college applications.
Some years later, the young man looked Cox up and told him he’d earned a four-year accounting degree. And he told Cox how much he appreciated what he’d done for him.
Cox also remembers a boy from East Rowan who lived in a foster home. Cox kept involved in his life, making sure he finished high school. The young man didn’t have any family, Cox said, and invited him to attend his graduation.
“When he saw me, he started crying,” Cox says. “I was the only person there to see him graduate.”
Cox is convinced that the little things you do can make a big difference, and as a probation officer, he was always attentive to the little things.
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Charlene Locklear is the chief probation/parole office for the county and has worked with Cox for 19 years, supervising him for four.
“He’s just excellent,” she said. “He was very committed to the job. He often went over and above the call of duty.”
“You could always count on him. He cared a lot about the people he worked for and with.”
He was also good at defusing situations, Locklear said.
“He’s a great officer, a great person, a great dad. I just can’t say enough good things about Gary. I was very sad when his day came to retire … I hate to lose Gary.”
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Oney says he believes that Cox was passed over for leadership positions that he deserved. Cox says it’s probably just as well ó he doesn’t think he would have been happy behind a desk, shuffling files rather than working with people.
Cox’s co-workers also benefited from his people skills.
Oney, who is also a chaplain and a pastor, says that people don’t often realize that pastors need to be able to talk about their problems too.
“I really feel like Gary cares when I talk to him about things. Gary’s one of those guys I can share with.”
Of course they weren’t always talking about serious things.
There was sports to discuss as well. He and Oney would commiserate together over the woes of various Cleveland teams, like the Browns.
Or better yet, talk about the Tennessee Vols.
“If they did heart surgery on him, when they went to pull his heart out, I think they’d find a ‘T’ for Tennessee,” Oney says.
Although he gave a full measure of devotion to his job, family has always been a priority for Cox.
“When I came home, it was all about family,” he says.
He and Lugene have three children: Jason, 30, a computer engineer in Raleigh; Bridget, 25, the assistant technical director for the New York City Opera; and Parker, 18, a freshman at Western Carolina University.
Cox, who is an active member of First United Methodist Church, plans to do some substitute teaching at the preschool in Concord where Lugene works. It’s a blended class, half special needs students and half Head Start students.
And since he never got theatre out of his blood, he hopes to become more involved with Piedmont Players Theatre.
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Contact Katie Scarvey at 704-797-4270 or kscarvey@salisburypost.com.