Ride-along put Jack Hendrickson on new path

Jack Hendrickson didn't start out in law enforcement. Fresh out of college in the 1960s, the Minneapolis native worked as a controller for Ford Motor Co. But sometime after his first ride-along with the Carver County Sheriff's Department, he found his true calling.

He stayed for 27 years, including four as sheriff, and remained as a deputy even after he was voted out of office after one tumultuous term.

"He was very dedicated," said his wife, Beverly. "It was tough for him to leave law enforcement because that was his life and he loved it." Hendrickson, who retired from the force in 1994, died of cardiac arrest on June 27 at age 66.

Friends and colleagues remember him as a tough-minded and compassionate public servant who brought the Sheriff's Department into the computer age in the 1980s.

"I think he understood what the future of law enforcement needed," said Duane Bickett, who was Hendrickson's chief deputy from 1982 to 1986. "He knew the computer era was coming."

Hendrickson started out "like most of us" as a reserve officer and worked his way up, said Al Wallin, who succeeded him as sheriff in 1987.

Hendrickson's first job, as a part-time deputy, was directing traffic. By 1974, he had completed training at the police academy and had become a full-time sheriff's deputy, according to local historian John von Walter, who wrote a chapter about Hendrickson in his 2005 book, "The Sheriffs of Carver County."

Rate of solved crimes rose

Hendrickson set out to modernize the department, and during his tenure nearly doubled the rate of solved crimes, from 26 percent to almost 50 percent, Von Walter wrote.

But the sheriff's office was dogged by controversy by the time he ran for reelection in 1986. That year, one of his deputies ran over and killed a 19-year-old woman during a police chase; the woman, who was riding on a reportedly stolen motorcycle, had fallen unseen into a cornfield when she was struck. Hendrickson angered many officers, in and out of his own department, when he decided to fire the deputy, Von Walter wrote. That same year, another deputy was arrested for, and pleaded guilty to, driving while intoxicated. With all the negative publicity, Hendrickson lost reelection.

But Wallin, who defeated him, said they remained friends. Hendrickson stayed on as a sergeant and "did just a fantastic job," Wallin said.

After retiring in 1994, Hendrickson kept a hand in police work, marketing computerized fingerprinting technology to law enforcement agencies around the country. He lived on a hobby farm in Carver County.