When Alden Sheffield graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School in the mid-1930s, he headed to rural Redwood Falls to open a private practice. But, in the midst of the Great Depression, farmers in the sleepy town didn't have much money for lawyers or anything else.
After several years of struggling to pay the bills, Sheffield packed up and headed west for a job with the FBI, smoking out German agents and sympathizers in defense-industry-heavy Los Angeles during World War II.
The Springfield, Minn., native worked in Western and Midwestern FBI offices for two decades, tracking white collar criminals and bank robbers, before serving 14 years as a Hennepin County Juvenile Court judge.
Sheffield died Nov. 17 at Friendship Village, a Bloomington retirement community. He was 99.
At a time when traffic citations could land a teen in juvenile court, Sheffield's son, Daniel Sheffield, fretted about friends and classmates standing before his father.
"When you're a teenager, you worry about your parents being cool," said his son, a lawyer in Colorado Springs. "People thought he was just fine."
With an FBI agent father, Daniel Sheffield said, he always won the "my dad's job is better" playground debates.
Alden Sheffield's final stop with the bureau brought him back home to Minnesota, where he worked out of the Minneapolis office. He often joked with family and friends that he had a decent career because he never was assigned to the Helena office in Montana, his son said.
