Jasper County Sheriff Randee Kaiser entered law enforcement in his late 20s after spending a few years as a journalist and not just a journalist, but a talented one.
I would like to say I gave Randee his start in that field, but if memory serves me correctly, before he started working for me at the Lamar Democrat while he was a student at Missouri Southern, he wrote some sports for the Liberal News while he was in high school.
At the Democrat, Randee covered sports, but also was a general assignment reporter covering everything from breaking news to hospital board meetings.
After he transferred from Missouri Southern to the University of Missouri School of Journalism, I kept in touch with him and when we had an opening for a sports editor at the Carthage Press in 1991 after the brief, but memorable, tenure of the late Bill Denney, I suggested to Managing Editor Neil Campbell that Randee, who was graduating, would be ideal for the position. After an interview with him, Neil agreed.
As he notes in the KODE interview, Randee did not just write sports, but was a photographer and general assignment reporter. When Neil retired in December 1993, the transition of this area reporter with an education degree from Missouri Southern to managing editor was made possible by having a staff consisting of four talented graduates of the MU School of Journalism- Jack Harshaw, who had been with the Press for more than 40 years, Ron Graber, who later succeeded me as managing editor, Lifestyles Editor Amy Lamb, my first hire and another reporter who had worked for me in Lamar, and Randee.
After Jack Harshaw retired, Randee asked for the vacant city-courthouse beat, which included police coverage and Carthage Police Chief Ed Ellefsen saw some qualities in Randee that he liked and encouraged him to become a police officer.
It was not an easy decision, Randee tells Bolander, but it seems to have worked out for him.
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