by Dennis Dalman
After serving with honor and distinction for 21 years with the Sartell Police Department, award-winning officer Shelby Lane will enter a new phase in her life.
Throughout the years, Lane has been given the police department’s Life Saving Award seven times for helping save people’s lives – mainly victims of cardiac arrest.
Her last day on the job was Feb. 29. At the Feb. 26 city council meeting, she was thanked by Police Chief Brandon Silgjord, council members and city staff and council members. A staff memo stated this: “We will miss her personality around the office and her dedication to Sartell and our law-enforcement profession. Thank you, Shelby!”
In a recent interview with the Newsleaders, Lane talked about her life in law enforcement.
She grew up in Grand Rapids on Minnesota’s Iron Range. After graduating from high school there, she earned a degree in law enforcement from Hibbing Community Tech College in 1993. She started her career in 1995 in Somerset, Wis., part-time and then full-time with the St. Croix Sheriff’s Department whose county seat is Hudson, Wis.
After five years in Wisconsin, Lane moved on to the Edina Police Department where she worked for three years. While there, she earned a prestigious “Top Cop” award for her part in helping save the life of a fallen officer who had been shot four times by a serial bank robber in Edina on Nov. 16, 2000. She was one of five officers so honored with the award presented by John Walsh, host of “America’s Most Wanted” TV series. She was also given the Minnesota Police Association’s Medal of Valor.
Lane was always all too well aware of how dangerous police work can be.
“I’ve been kicked, punched, hit at domestic-assault situations or in cases where there were behavioral-health problems in crisis situations,” Lane said. “You learn to live every day as if it might be your last.”
There were happy times, sad times.
“Helping save lives was a happy thing, so rewarding,” she said. “In some cases, the system fails people or they fail themselves, and that’s a sad thing except when we can help those people.”
The worst, she said, is seeing people die (in a car accident, for example) and hearing their last words and then having to go bring the tragic news in person to their survivors.
“That’s so gut-wrenching,” she added.
As a police officer, Lane was a “Jill of many trades,” having to act not only as a law enforcer, but a kind of babysitter to people in trouble, a counselor and psychologist of sorts and part of a network for getting help for troubled people. She was so glad to see many of those people turn their lives around and become good, responsible people.
“We (police) learn to be one big happy family,” she said. “And we so appreciate all the support and kind words from the community.”
In her free time, Lane has always enjoyed being in the great outdoors, and now that she’ll have more time she can indulge more than ever in outdoor activities. She and her partner of 20 years, Shane Eastman, have one daughter, Josie, a sophomore at Sartell High School.
Shelby Lane
