Longtime sheriff’s captain dies suddenly. He loved life, learning and helping others
Former Benton County sheriff’s Captain John Hodge loved learning, loved life and loved helping other to help themselves.
Hodge, 76, died suddenly Thursday following a brain aneurysm, said his wife of 52 years, Debbie, and son Parker Hodge.
John was born in Pendleton and moved to Kennewick when he was 4.
After graduating from Kennewick High School, his career serving the public started in the late 1970s. He was a reserve officer with the Benton County Sheriff’s Office before he fully joined the department in 1979, kicking off a 27-year law enforcement career.
At the time, the county’s population was less than half what it is now, and the sheriff’s office worked out of a two-bedroom house, Debbie recalled.
Over his career, John Hodge worked as a patrol officer and then a detective before holding command positions, including heading up the patrol division, the detectives and then the jail.
His love of learning often intersected with his job, said his wife. At one point, then-Sheriff Jim Kennedy wanted the office to get an airplane to help search for drug operations. He was tasked to do the research into the federal program that would allow them to get a plane.
He then needed to learn how to fly the plane, so he got his pilot’s license, she sad.
His work sometimes followed him to unexpected places. Debbie said she was out with him at the mall sometimes when a person he arrested would greet him kindly.
He told her, “I try to be as respectful as they will allow me to be,” and tell them that he “didn’t like it any better than they did.”
Normally, this attitude would calm people who were agitated.
John initially resisted becoming the head of the jail initially, but eventually he took over the position, and helped lead the remodel. He made sure to focus on making the facility as technologically advanced as he could, and brought all of the departments in to make sure it was designed functionally.
He retired from law enforcement in 2005, but his wife wasn’t ready to leave her job. So for the next 10 years he worked as a Ben Franklin Transit driver.
He left that spot in 2016 when his wife retired.
He briefly considered returning to the sheriff’s office to lead it after a tumultuous period under former Sheriff Jerry Hatcher.
“Once you’re involved in law enforcement, it’s kind of like being involved in a family,” he told the Tri-City Herald during an interview about his possible run for sheriff.
Debbie said he appreciated and may have been a little relieved when the job went to now Sheriff Tom Croskrey.
Travel, learning and the outdoors
John loved learning and served on the Kennewick School Board for six years starting in 1995.
He also considered it important to donate to causes that allowed people to help themselves, such as Habitat for Humanity.
“He was a very intelligent man. He loved to research things,” said his wife. “He was deeply involved in all three of his kids’ lives and deeply proud of their achievements.”
He also enjoyed hunting, fishing and travel. That included trips through Montana and to Seattle and Orlando.
“He enjoyed the outdoors. It didn’t matter if he caught anything. It was the experience of being outdoors that he enjoyed,” she said.