Issaquah said goodbye to a well-known law enforcement face last week.

After 28 years with the Issaquah Police Department, Commander Stan Conrad is hanging up the handcuffs and retiring.

A celebration on the afternoon of July 28 at the Police Department honored Conrad’s career. Members of the department, sad to see their colleague go but appreciative of his hard work, presented Conrad with commemorative tokens of thanks, including a special police retirement badge.

Born in upstate New York, Conrad came to the area in 1983 as a member of the military police at Fort Lewis. After getting out of the army, Conrad worked at the Renton Police Department, but soon relocated to Issaquah.

“I didn’t like big towns — I wanted a small town,” Conrad explained to the Reporter. And in 1988, “Issaquah was a small town.”

Conrad said that upon being hired, he was told that he would “have an opportunity to grow with the department” by then-Chief of Police Dag Garrison.

‘That has rung true,” Conrad said. “The one thing Issaquah does is change.”

He said that the change and growth in Issaquah over the past three decades have made his job more interesting and dynamic, and subsequently more fun.

Before becoming a commander, Conrad worked as a narcotics detective and a sergeant. Conrad especially enjoyed his time as a member of the Eastside Narcotics Task Force, where he got to go undercover to catch drug dealers in the area.

“The nice thing is that we don’t have a lot of violent crime here,” Conrad said of Issaquah. “We have crime — but just enough to keep us in business.”

The one exception to this, Conrad said, was the 1993 Tom Horn homicide, which Conrad named as the “most significant” case he has worked on. The case, in which a California couple murdered Issaquah resident Tom Horn and attacked his wife Jolee, took five years to go to trial, Conrad said. Conrad, who was a sergeant at the time, and retired Deputy Chief Steve Cozart (at the time a police officer) were “the first officers to respond to the homicide, and followed it to prosecution.”

At Conrad’s retirement gathering, there was no shortage of police co-workers and friends from town who stood up to say a few words about the retiring commander. Though everyone shared different anecdotes, their speeches had one feature in common: the attention paid to Conrad’s community service.

During his time in the police force, Conrad played an extremely active role in the community, according to Fred Nystrom, an Issaquah Rotarian and the executive director of local nonprofit Life Enrichment Options.

“Stan was one of those people who made community policing a reality,” Nystrom told the Reporter. “He was a spectacular representative of the police.”

Conrad served as a Rotary member, as the chair of the annual Challenge Races for children with special needs (put on by Life Enrichment Options and the Rotary), as a volunteer with the Special Olympics and as the Police Department’s Salmon Days liaison, a position Conrad called a “rewarding aspect of law enforcement.”

Nystrom said being a Rotarian “is unusual for police,” because members of law enforcement often do not have much spare time; however, Conrad always “made the time to come to Rotary [meetings].”

“If you look up public service in the dictionary, there’s a picture of you there,” City Administrator Bob Harrison told Conrad before the crowd, upon presenting the commander with a commemorative plaque for his volunteer efforts.

“It’s a great community to have spent a career serving,” Conrad said. “I’m very appreciative.”

With the recent violence against police in the nation, Conrad said that it is more important than ever to “support law enforcement officers.”

However, he does not foresee any problems in Issaquah because “we’ve always had such a great relationship with the community.”

Conrad is retiring to be able to devote his time to taking care of his wife Tammy, who has leukemia.

“I want to thank Chief Garrison for giving me the opportunity [to serve in Issaquah] and Chief [Scott] Behrbaum for being supportive and understanding of my situation,” Conrad said.

The now-retired Cozart summed up what Conrad meant to the Police Department in one sentence: “Stan is like family.”