Kayla Riggs virtually grew up in the Warren County Sheriff’s office and always knew she wanted to do something with law. She just didn’t know it was this.

This week, Riggs followed in the footsteps of her father Undersheriff Jeff Riggs and graduated from the Mississippi Law Enforcement Officers Training Academy in Pearl. They are the county’s only current father-daughter law enforcement duo and might perhaps be the first one in Warren County history.

While Jeff remains in his longtime position with the sheriff’s office, Kayla is an agent for the Mississippi Gaming Commission.

“He didn’t talk me into it. He tried to talk me out of it,” Kayla said. “I wanted to be a lawyer at first.”

Then one day while working on her bachelor’s degree at Ole Miss, she called her father.

“She called me one day and said ‘Dad, I think I’m going to change my field to homeland security and criminal justice because if I don’t go to law school, at least I can get a job.’ That was the telltale point there,” Jeff said.

Soon, Kayla switched her major to homeland security and criminal justice. She graduated from Ole Miss in 2014 and is now working on a master’s at Delta State.

“She is taking all the necessary steps to make herself a very productive law enforcement officer. I taught at Hinds Community College for 10 years, and I always told my students you need to get a bachelor’s and eventually a master’s. She’s doing the things I used to preach to other young people,” Jeff said.

It was the help Kayla had seen her father give since she was 5 that inspired her to start a career in law enforcement.

“I saw how many people he would help. Even if he had written them a ticket or put them in jail, they would come up to him at the store and say how much he had helped them,” she said.

Kayla was one of just four women to graduate from MELOTA in the most recent class of 66 recruits.

“It’s tough, but don’t give up and don’t discouraged,” she said as advice for other women seeking a career in law enforcement. “The males may be a little stronger, but you can still outdo them.”

There are certainly more women in law enforcement than when Jeff began his career in 1982, but they still remain rare in the profession.

“We need more women in law enforcement. They play an extra vital role,” Jeff said.  “This is a male-dominated profession, and we need women.”

Next, Kayla plans to follow her father into the military. Jeff has more than 30 years in the National Guard and is a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Operation Desert Storm.

“It’s probably going to happen,” Kayla said. “Definitely.”