Then-Kent Police Chief Jay Skewes told Lorna Rufener at her job interview in 1980, “I’ve been waiting for you for seven years.”
That comment puzzled Rufener, then 21, until she found out the Kent Police had had just one female officer.
Rufener, 50, shared that story and many others during an interview Wednesday at Pizzeria Fondi restaurant at Kent Station. She retired last week after 29 years with the Kent Police.
“I had way more good days than bad,” Rufener said.
As one of the first female officers in Kent, it took time for Rufener to be accepted in such a male-dominated field.
“It wasn’t easy,” Rufener said. “Some didn’t support me, but a lot of people did support me. Most of the people still work here who supported me. The ones who didn’t moved on, and got out of law enforcement.”
There are more than a dozen female police officers now in Kent. But for the first four years of her job, Rufener was the only one.
“If you do your job, eventually people accept you,” she said.
Rufener started as a patrol officer. She then worked as a crime-prevention officer for about five years in the 1980s before returning to patrol duty. A short time after returning to patrol duty, she and her fellow officers on a graveyard shift had an unusually rough night, with numerous calls involving violent people.
When Rufener walked into the police station after her shift near the rest of the officers, they told her, “Welcome back to patrol. We’re glad you’re on our squad.”
That made her realize she was in the right place.
“I kind of felt I’d be fine,” she said.
Rufener said she’d heard the horror stories about police departments where male officers would not back up female officers. But in Kent, she noted, nothing like that happened to her.
Rufener, who grew up in Tacoma, had hoped to become an attorney. She worked as a paralegal and then figured a few years as a police officer would give her a strong background for work as an attorney.
“I thought I would do it for about five years,” Rufener said of police work. “But I always loved it. And I did just about every job you can do as a manager.”
Rufener had a variety of duties over the years. She was the administrative lieutenant in charge of hiring, recruitment and internal affairs. She supervised the community education unit. She helped the police department receive its first national accreditation in 1996 from the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, Inc., based in Fairfax, Va.
Rufener also worked as a lieutenant in the detective division and served as commander of the narcotics regional task force that works to bust up organized crime. She worked three years as the support services commander, overseeing detectives, records, evidence, community education, budgets and internal affairs.
For the last five years, Rufener served as the commander of the Kent city jail.
Rufener lives in South King County with her husband, Karl Rufener. They have a son at Gonzaga University in Spokane and a son at Enumclaw High School. Karl Rufener is a battalion chief at the Renton Fire Department, where he has worked for 26 years and plans to work for a few more years.
In retirement, Lorna Rufener plans to travel and might work as a consultant for attorneys. She also would like to write the history of the Kent Police Department over the last 30 years.
“It was just time,” Rufener said on her decision to retire. “I feel much more relaxed.”
But first, Rufener had one more work story to share.
Just six months into her new job, Rufener pulled over a car driving in circles around midnight on South Central Avenue, near the Green River. When she walked to the driver’s window, she found a hysterical woman with two small children and an infant in the back seat.
“The woman told me her husband was going to divorce her and get custody of the kids,” Rufener said. “She told me she was building up the courage to drive into the Green River.”
Stopping the woman from taking such a drastic step stayed with Rufener throughout her career.
“That was the day I knew I was doing what I was meant to do,” she said.
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