When Mark Nelson was nearly 4 years old, he posed for a photo wearing his dad’s sheriff’s deputy badge, his hand gripping the handle of his dad’s gun, standing by his dad’s patrol car. Today, Nelson, takes the reins as Cowlitz County sheriff, appointed by the county commissioners Sept. 22 to replace retiring Sheriff Bill Mahoney.

Nelson’s father, Les Nelson, held the job from 1974 to 1986 — but his son said he didn’t plan to grow up to be a cop.

“I really thought I would go into the ministry,” said Nelson, a 1974 graduate of Mark Morris High School.

A singer since age 3, he sang at numerous churches, toured with the Christian vocal groups Continental Singers and Lower Columbia Singers and had lead roles in musical productions such as Jesus in “Godspell.” He has also sung the National Anthem for the Thunder Mountain Pro Rodeo every year since 1977.

“My interests were music and theater — I loved all of that — and I really thought I would end up going in the ministry,” he said.

But in his senior year of high school he got a part-time job working for King Security at Weyerhaeuser Co., where his father was named security manager in 1971. The elder Nelson had quit the sheriff’s office after losing to Chuck Gill in his first bid for sheriff.

“So I got a job working down there and all of a sudden it was like something sparked, and I just knew,” Nelson said. “I just knew it was what I wanted to do.”

Vivid recollections

Les Nelson became a sheriff’s deputy in 1950 after a deputy friend told him he was quitting and offered to give Les his uniforms. He left after serving a year, then returned in 1953. He worked part time until 1960, then became a full-time deputy.

Mark Nelson, 53, said his earliest memories are from the early 1960s when his dad was a jailer at the Cowlitz County Jail, then located on the top floor of what is now the Cowlitz County Administration Building in Kelso.

“There was a set of big sliding bars when you first came off the elevator upstairs,” Nelson said. “They would hit the button, which would start a buzzer, and these great big bars like you see in the old movies would open up. Gosh, I remember us kids going in and we’d run around and give Dad a hug. We’d hug any of the rest of the deputies that were hanging around there.”

He has vivid recollections from the day a female inmate smuggled matches in her brassiere and used them to light her padded cell on fire. The windowless place immediately filled with smoke. There were around 13 inmates, and Les Nelson was the only jailer on duty.

“Dad ran and grabbed a gas mask … grabbed the keys and, crawling along the floor, went around the jail and brought out every one of those prisoners.”

The firefighters told Nelson’s worried wife, Wanda, that “they knew Dad was still alive because they could hear the keys jingling. He was reaching by feel.”

At age 8, Nelson saw his first dead body when he accompanied his father on a call to Silver Lake.

“You’ve got to realize, it was a different time back then,” he said.

“This fella had driven off into the lake,” he said. “(Deputies) went to recover his body out of the lake and when they brought him up to the surface I reached down with all the rest of the guys to help pull him to shore … and I remember Dad looking at me with a kind of ‘Are you OK?’ look.”

He chuckled.

“Although I think it was more like a ‘Don’t tell your mother’ look.”

Turns down first offer

After his honorable discharge from the Marine Corps, where he served in the military police, Nelson began his 32-year career in law enforcement by volunteering with the Cowlitz County Sheriff’s Reserves.

Shortly after he and his wife Patty were married in 1978, Kelso Police Chief Tony Stoutt told him there was a job opening. Nelson’s brother, Wayne, was an officer there.

“I was so excited,” he said. “I called Patty and said, ‘Kelso called! They want me to come to work for them.’ And she said, ‘I don’t want you to be a cop! You’ll be working nights! It’s dangerous!’ ”

He turned the job down but continued working through the ranks in the sheriff’s reserve. To pay the bills, he worked in the woods and sold insurance, among other jobs.

Meanwhile, Patty relaxed her objections to law enforcement as she got to know her father-in-law and brother-in-law better.

“I was spending so much time in my volunteer reserve work, she finally said, ‘Why don’t you do this full time? At least you’ll get paid for it,’ ” Nelson said.

Longview Police Chief Ed Bourdage hired him in 1984.

“I worked with a great bunch of guys at LPD,” Nelson said. “I enjoyed working for Ed; he was a real cop’s cop.”

On his first meeting with Bourdage, Nelson walked smack into the wall. He later repeated the unintentional slapstick in the field.

“One night I got called to a big fight at Bonnie and Clyde’s,” a former nightspot across from Fred Meyer notorious for brawls. “So I go tearing out there. I come flying into the parking lot in front, lights on. I jumped out my car and ran and hit the front door. Which was locked. I looked like a Junebug on the window, just splat.”

Nobody saw him. The fight was out back.

In 1990, he was hired by the sheriff’s office, where he has served in nearly every position, including DARE officer, Search and Rescue coordinator, services division, marine patrol, detective sergeant and captain.

“Gosh, I’ve gotten to do lots of amazing things — work on the water, fly helicopters, firearms training, stuff I never would have dreamed of doing if I’d stayed at LPD,” he said. “Which is why I made the change. The opportunity to do things that seemed so exciting to me. … This is where my heart was. Getting to come back home and end up where I am today – Wow.”

Special ceremony for dad

Les Nelson, 87, who suffers from dementia, couldn’t attend his son’s official swearing-in Sept. 22. So Tuesday night, family members and friends gathered at Canterbury Gardens for a ceremonial swearing-in.

Sheriff Bill Mahoney administered the oath, and Wayne Nelson — who retired March 31 as Kelso Police Chief — pinned their dad’s old badge on his younger brother’s chest.

Mark Nelson said his wife and children – Nick, 18, and Hayley, 14 — are supportive and excited for him.

“It’s something that we’ve talked about as a family for a long time. I intended running for sheriff when Bill retired (in 2010), but I certainly did not think it was going to happen this way. So just the way that this has all played out is quite amazing,” he said.

“My feeling is that God’s had his hand on this thing for many, many, many years.”

Patty’s support for her husband’s career didn’t waver even after she was diagnosed with cancer last year. The cancer is in remission.

“After everything we went through last year … this has been just an amazing journey this last couple months,” Nelson said. “I think it’s been a real blessing for her. She’s just been thrilled. It’s been a neat thing for her to be able to focus on and be excited about. She says, ‘What do they call the sheriff’s wife?’ We couldn’t think of anything besides Mrs. Nelson, so she decided ‘empress’ was good.”

Nelson’s philosophy for the sheriff’s position is his basic approach to life.

“I treat people like I was taught, and that was to respect folks and to serve, to help,” he said. “That’s the way my parents raised me and that’s the way my family is. That’s the way my brothers are, the way my sisters are, and that’s what you get when you’re dealing with a Nelson. If that’s what people like in their sheriff, then they won’t be disappointed. And if it’s not what they like in a sheriff, when the time comes they’ll get to make their own decisions.”