Scott’s Sheriff of the Year takes serving to heart

Fliers, a stack of them, sat at John Lizenby’s right elbow. They told of a 26-year-old missing woman.

Nina Rae Keown’s mother had called Lizenby, Scott County’s sheriff, every morning since the disappearance. She hoped for answers that Lizenby hoped he could give soon.

“I’ll probably get the posse out,” he said. “You search. Maybe you find something.”

Only in some counties does a distraught mother even have the sheriff’s direct phone number. Only in some does a sheriff have a posse – yes, on horseback – to deploy. And only in some, for that matter, would a missing adult register so high on the scale of worries.

Over a career perhaps in its final months, Lizenby has made sure that Scott is one of those counties.

“He stands up for the people,” said Daniel Cole of Austin, no matter that he has spent time in Lizenby’s jail. “He’s not one to pin a badge on him and let it go to his head.”

This time in Lizenby’s presence to apply for a gun permit, Cole admired a plaque the sheriff received recently from the Indiana Sheriffs Association. Lizenby is the group’s 2010 Sheriff of the Year. He was nominated by employees and elected leaders who agree with Cole.

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