Murphy – Late Monday morning, the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office posted a release that included one detail with historical significance.
The release started with the headline, “Sheriff Chris Wood announces arrest of Virginia fugitive,” and ended with a quote: “Sheriff Chris Wood stated, ‘If you are a criminal offender in Cherokee County, rest assured we will find you and assure you are brought to justice. It doesn’t matter whether you commit the crimes here or there, the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office is committed to taking offenders into custody and protecting victims.’”
Chris Wood took the oath of office as Cherokee County sheriff just hours before that release was posted, capping a whirlwind three weeks when he went from being a candidate for sheriff to sheriff one week before the primary election Tuesday.
He’ll hold the position of appointed sheriff until Dec. 1, when the winner of Tuesday’s primary – who has no competition in the Tuesday, Nov. 3, general election – will take office. Wood, a retired N.C. Highway Patrol lieutenant, replaces Dustin Smith, who resigned earlier this month after a three-year term in office marred by controversy, including the loss of a federal civil lawsuit and the death of a detention officer.
Smith had been running for re-election but dropped out in tandem with his resignation. He remains on the ballot along with his challengers, Wood and Sam May, a whole home generator installer and U.S. Army veteran.
A quirk of state law requires that, in the case of a partisan office, the executive committee of the party to which the previous office-holder is a member recommends the replacement, and that recommendation gets affirmed by the board of commissioners. In the case of Smith’s replacement, Wood and May – the same two candidates running in the Republican primary – applied to the Cherokee County Republican Party Executive Committee to become the next sheriff. There were no other applicants.
The executive interviewed Wood and May in Peachtree on Thursday and, in a secret vote, chose Wood.
The Cherokee County Board of Commissioners appointed Wood sheriff Friday. Superior Court Judge Tessa Sellers administered the oaths of office as sheriff and also administered oaths of office to all sheriff’s deputies, detention officers, staff and other positions Monday at the Cherokee County Courthouse.
Monday’s ceremony
The main courtroom at the Cherokee County Courthouse was packed with uniformed officers Monday morning. Most were Cherokee County sheriff’s deputies, but not all. There were also representatives from the N.C. Highway Patrol, Murphy Police Department, Andrews Police Department, a Cherokee County School Resource Officer, Cherokee County Board of Commissioners Chair Alan Bryant and others.
Because sheriff’s office staff took oaths of office under the previous sheriff, they were all required to take oaths once again. Among them was Justin Jacobs, who had been chief deputy under Smith but who is stepping down for the time being.
Jacobs filled in for Smith without the title of sheriff pending the appointment of a new sheriff. Wood acknowledged the role Jacobs played in keeping the sheriff’s office running, admitting he had a “fear that everything would collapse” following Smith’s resignation.
Following the oaths, Wood introduced his new chief deputy, Joe Wood (no relation), who resigned from a similar position in Clay County so he could work with Chris Wood in Cherokee County.
“There’s no one in the world I would rather stand up here with than Joe Wood,” Chris Wood said. “If he speaks, it’s from my mouth.”
Joe Wood vowed to “see if he can outwork everyone here” and said he would lead from the front. He unsuccessfully ran for sheriff four years ago, when Chris Wood was expected to be his chief deputy.
Aside from a new chief deputy, Chris Wood advised that there would not be a lot of personnel changes.
“I realize this path is more difficult than what we typically have,” he said to his staff, urging them to look forward, not backward.
Wood said the sheriff’s office will be a family in which members respect one another. If the sheriff’s office succeeds, it is because of his staff, he said. If it fails, he added, it is because of him.
He vowed to make law enforcement a fun career like what he experienced during his career, and aims to make the sheriff’s office an agency where deputies stay until they retire.
Wood said he will have different expectations than what they were used to, but vowed not to turn the sheriff’s office into a Highway Patrol. Each person in the sheriff’s office will have roles to play, and will be expected to respect the persons they work for and will follow the chain of command.
“I’m excited,” he said. “I hope you are.”
The Friday before
At 5:30 p.m. Friday, the Cherokee County Board of Commissioners held a special called meeting to appoint Chris Wood sheriff on the advice of the Cherokee County Republican Party Executive Committee’s recommendation from a meeting the night before.
Darryl Brown, the board’s attorney, de facto presided over the meeting, reading off the laws and presenting them to the board for its vote.
There was one addition: As sheriff, Wood would be running an organization for which his son, Hunter Wood, a deputy, also works. In addition to accepting Wood as the recommended sheriff, the board also voted to allow Hunter Wood to continue working with the sheriff’s office.
Chris Wood said his son would be working well down the chain of command. He quipped that if he had to get involved in supervising his son, he had bigger problems than that with the organization.
Bryant added his own quip. He said Chris Wood would be wearing three belts – his gun belt, his regular belt and, for his son, his whipping belt.
Bryant urged Wood to bring “dignity and transparency” back to the sheriff’s office.
The night before that
Cherokee County Republican leaders met in the Educate 4 Success Building, a former church off of Family Church Road, to face a decision that ran counter to their own rule about not endorsing a candidate in the primary. There were only two choices Thursday night, and both involved candidates running for sheriff.
The executive committee could have waited until after the March 3 primary to pick a sheriff to hold office until Dec. 1, but Chair Mark Kephart said he was drawing on his experience from a long career in U.S. Army military police.
Continuity is key and leadership stability is crucial, he said. Holding off on choosing a sheriff would result in unnecessary extra days of limbo for the sheriff’s office and impact public safety.
With one member absent, eight members of the executive committee asked nine questions to Wood and May about challenges, relationships with other agencies and management philosophies, and other topics.
Commissioner Ben Adams, the only commissioner present at the meeting, asked the applicants whether they would delay taking office until after the primary. May said he would, while Wood said he was eager to get to work.
“I’ll take every day I can be given to right that ship,” Wood said.
The question period last just over a half hour and the deliberation period lasted about that long. From start to end, the process lasted about an hour.