Wallowa County's new Sheriff Ryan Moody gets comfortable in his office on one of his first days on the job, Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2023.

ENTERPRISE — There’s a new sheriff in Wallowa County — Sheriff’s Sgt. Ryan Moody was sworn in Wednesday, Dec. 20, before the Wallowa County Board of Commissioners by county Clerk Sandy Lathrop.

Just after the swearing-in, amid calls for a speech, Moody said he hopes to keep the county much as his predecessor Joel Fish left it.

“I don’t have any huge goals for the Sheriff’s Office,” he said. “I think that it’s been a good place and I want to keep it a good place moving forward.”

Long-time deputyBorn in Lincoln City in 1972, Moody moved in 1977 to Corvallis, where he attended high school and then Linn-Benton Community College.

He started his law-enforcement career as a Benton County Sheriff’s cadet through the Boy Scouts Explorer program in 1989. While a cadet, he attended Cadet Academy for six months, followed by a reserve academy. In 1992, he was hired as a marine cadet for the Sheriff’s Office. During his third season as a marine deputy in 1994, he was hired full time as a patrol deputy for Benton County.

He was a patrol deputy until 2001, when he was promoted to corporal and then to sergeant in 2008.

During the course of his career, Moody was assigned to Benton County’s Detective Division for three years, was active with the Linn-Benton Regional Special Weapons and Tactics Team for almost 15 years, supervised the Marine Patrol for six years and managed the entire fleet of vehicles for almost 25 years, including the fleet budget.

He also was assigned to liaison/security for Oregon State University’s athletics program, where he frequently worked with several hundred of the student athletes. That included traveling with the OSU football team from 2002-21, and the baseball team to the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska in 2005-06.

On his days off, he volunteered many hours helping organize clothing for OSU student athletes.

He also was employed by the state Department of Public Safety Standards and Training as a vehicle-stop instructor and as an emergency vehicle operation instructor. He still holds this position and teaches around the state and at the academy as he has for the past 19 years.

Moody retired from the Benton County Sheriff’s Office in 2022 after 20 years.

Wallowa County connectionsMoody may have spent most of his life in Corvallis, but he’s no stranger to Wallowa County. His family started spending their annual summer vacations at Trouthaven Resort on the west side of Wallowa Lake in 1969 and continued until 2009.

He has been married to his wife, Susan, for 13 years. Together, they have five children and five grandchildren.

The family history of vacationing in the Wallowa County — and his children’s subsequent move to the county — brought the Moodys to the area.

Ryan got to know Fish when he was in the county visiting his children and grandchildren.

“That was a little bit of an attraction,” he said. “We were ready to move on from the life there and were ready for something different.”

Moody met Fish when the latter was elected sheriff in 2020 after several years as Enterprise Police chief. From his position overseeing Benton County’s emergency vehicles, he was able to help out Fish a bit by donating portable radios. That started a friendship with Fish, who eventually asked Moody if he was interested in working after retirement, which led to Moody retiring from Benton County and starting at Wallowa County two weeks later.

“I have the utmost respect for that guy,” he said of Fish. “He’s just such a professional. He’s one of the best ever.”

When Moody and Fish had the conversation about working in Wallowa County, “I told him I’m going to try to give five years,” he said. “Then he came to me two months ago and told me the situation and said, ‘I want to go home and take care of my mom,’ and he was pretty heartbroken about his 89-year-old mom. He felt like if he ran for another term (as sheriff), he might not see her in that capacity again.”

Since coming here a year and a half ago, Moody has become a sheriff’s sergeant. His wife, Susan, is the dispatch captain.

Moody said now that he’s sheriff, Undersheriff Billy Wells will be his wife’s supervisor to avoid any conflict of interest.

Wallowa vs. BentonThere are a few similarities between Benton and Wallowa counties, although the differences are greater.

“Corvallis itself is very different from Wallowa County, but we have some small communities that are quite a way out of town that do resemble Wallowa County a bit, the way people are and the scenery,” Moody said. “It’s a little bit greener and the trees are a little bit taller; there’s more rain. But it doesn’t hold a candle to how beautiful Wallowa County is.”

The greatest difference, he said, is the population: Benton County has more than 90,000 people and Oregon State University, compared to Wallowa County’s approximately 7,500 people.

“I would say the biggest difference is the 30,000 college students,” he said. “The core of Benton County is Corvallis. We have the smallest jail per capita in the state of Oregon. We only have 40 beds for all those people. Back in 1996, we started trying to get a new jail built. I had the local paper ride around with me one night and they did an article on the local jail bed problem. That’s when we went for our first levy … and we still don’t have it, they never passed a levy.”

The jail problem here is a little different. There’s no jail here, although the county has several holding cells. Prisoners who need to be held are transported to the Union County Jail in La Grande.

“The nice thing here is we don’t arrest nearly as many people,” he said. “And when we do, those people, depending on what they were arrested for, will generally stay in jail at least overnight. That’s different than in Benton County when we’d release them in 45 minutes to an hour — we just didn’t have the room. And then when COVID hit, that changed everything. We didn’t take anybody.”

Benton County had policies that said only seriously violent criminals would be jailed.

The respective sheriff’s offices are also quite different.

Benton has 24 road deputies, 20 jail deputies and 10 parole and probation officers, plus office staff.

Wallowa County has but four road deputies — they still need one to replace Fish, which Moody plans to hire. Wallowa County has two parole and probation officers and a supervisor.

The county’s seven reserve deputies help make up the difference.

“We couldn’t function without the reserves,” he said.

“They do a lot of everything,” he said of the reserves. “We have one who comes in pretty regularly to do court security, so that frees us from having to be in the courthouse all day.”

“They also do transports,” he said. “If one of the other law-enforcement agencies arrests somebody or we arrest somebody and they have to go to jail in La Grande, if they meet that threshold of where they have to go, we’ll call in the reserves into transport them so that we’re not down and leaving the county shorthanded.”

The other law-enforcement agencies in the county certainly come in handy.

“They’re huge,” he said. “We could not function with just four people in the Sheriff’s Office without the Oregon State Police and the Enterprise Police Department.”

Changes?As Moody said when sworn in, he has no real plans for changes at the Sheriff’s Office.

“I just want to keep things going in the direction that they’re going,” he said.

“I’m sure there’s going to be some small changes, especially with losing a body. We had five and now we’re down to four. We are going to try to hire another one. I just don’t know how and when yet. I have to work with the commissioners on the budget. I don’t think we could function without those two other agencies at the level where we’re at right now. We’d have to have upwards of eight or 10 deputies if we didn’t have those other two agencies helping us out.”

Off-dutyMoody is still getting to know the county and has been having some interesting experiences doing so. He’s come to like Hells Canyon and the Snake River, two of the county’s major attractions.

He traveled up the Snake with the Forest Service about 50 miles and got a good look at the canyon from a jet boat.

“That was a good experience for me to be able to see that,” he said.

Enterprise Police Officer George Kohlepp gave him another view by taking Moody down to Dug Bar on four-wheelers.

“That was quite the adventure,” he said.

He’s not a hunter, but he does hope to do some fishing on his off hours.

“I like to drive around the county and see what I haven’t seen,” he said. “It’s so big; we’ll never be able to explore all of it.”

Moody said he will endeavor to respond to telephone calls as quickly as he can.

“Everybody’s a little different at when they try to get some family time and to sleep,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll answer every single call, but you try to answer as many as you can.”

But the main thing he wants county residents to know is the relationship between the county residents and law enforcement won’t change.

“What I want the people to know is they can count on the Sheriff’s Office to maintain the level of service that they got from Joel and I don’t want to change anything very much,” he said. “I just want to continue the relationship with the county and the people.”

Ryan Moody

BORN: 1972

RESIDENCE: Wallowa County

OCCUPATION: Wallowa County Sheriff

FAMILY: Wife, Susan; five children; five grandchildren

IN HIS OFF HOURS: He enjoys exploring Wallowa County; the Snake River and Hells Canyon have become favorite destinations. He also hopes to get

in some fishing time during his off hours.