Jeff Riggs sat at his desk Thursday morning at the Warren County Sheriff’s office and pondered the idea of retiring after 37 years in law enforcement.

Thursday was his last day as Warren County undersheriff. “Five o’clock today; if I can get out of here,” he said.

But Riggs’ life in public service isn’t limited to the sheriff’s office. He served four years in the U.S. Coast Guard then joined the Mississippi National Guard, retiring in December as a command sergeant major, closing out a 42-year career.

He has criminal justice degrees from Hinds Community College and Mississippi College, and an MBA from William Carey University.

It was his time in the Coast Guard that inspired him to go into law enforcement.

“When I was in the Coast Guard my last two years, I was at a search and rescue station that performed law enforcement. We did boardings,” he said.

“What hooked me was two Coast Guard Reserve guys — one was a Washington, D.C., policemen and the other was a Fairfax county (Virginia) policeman. I rode with them one night and I was hooked from then on.”

In 1980, after leaving the Coast Guard, he enlisted in the National Guard and served with the 114th MP Company in Vicksburg.

After working at several jobs, Riggs enrolled at Hinds in 1981, and went to work at the sheriff’s office as part of a cooperative education program while he was a criminal justice student at Hinds.

“The professor at the time was Wesley Reeves; he was a retired JPD deputy chief. He started this cooperative education where you worked a semester and went to school a semester. I liked it so much, I started in the jail that August. I ended up going to school days and nights to finish my degrees. I went to school from 1981 through 2000 going days and nights.”

In early 1982, former Sheriff Paul Barrett moved him out of the jail to a road position, where he worked with another young deputy named Martin Pace.

“Jeff and I have worked alongside one another in one capacity or another since the early 1980s,” Pace said. “Jeff is one of the most dedicated professional law enforcement officers that I’ve ever worked with, with a deep devotion to this community.

“He spent all of his adult life in the National Guard as well as serving with the sheriff’s office, so his only absences from public service in Warren County have been when he was overseas with the National Guard.

“He will be truly missed by all of the men and women of the Warren County Sheriff’s Office. We wish him the very best in his well-earned retirement,” Pace said.

Riggs worked in patrol from February 1982 to Dec. 31, 1987, when he was elected justice court judge for the county’s Southern District.

“I wanted to experience politics,” he said of the decision to run for justice court, adding he returned to the sheriff’s office as undersheriff in 1997 when Pace was appointed sheriff.

Undersheriff, Riggs said, “Is the chief deputy, and my duties include budget, grants, training, overall supervision of the sheriff’s office, internal affairs, anything administrative-wise. I didn’t get that involved the criminal side, but I helped in criminal investigations.”

During his time with the sheriff’s office, Riggs made several overseas deployments with the National Guard, starting with Operation Desert Storm from 1990-91, Operation Joint Endeavor in 1996 supporting U.S. forces in Bosnia, Operations Enduring Freedom in Iraq in 2003, and then in Afghanistan in 2010-11.

“Sheriff Pace was very supportive of the National Guard, and he gave me the flexibility for the Guard, because the Guard is not just weekend a month or two weekends a year, when you get up in the upper ranks,” he said.

“We made an agreement and he stuck to that agreement and was a great supporter of the Guard and the military.”

Riggs put his attendance at the FBI National Academy as the highlight of his career, “Because less than 1 percent (of officers) get to go to that, and Mississippi only sends eight people a year.

“It was great. It was graduate level work through the University of Virginia. If you didn’t have a bachelor’s degree, then you took bachelor’s degree level courses. If you had a bachelor’s you had to take some master’s level courses. It was real good.”

Part of the experience, he said, was meeting senior level officials of law enforcement agencies from all over the world, adding his class had 25 foreign students.

“It was a great experience; I learned a lot about different subjects of policing,” he said.

Riggs said one local case sticks in his mind, the disappearance of Jacquelyn Levitt.

Levitt disappeared in 1995, and in 1997, he said, he, investigator Jay McKenzie, and FBI agents Mark Stuckey and Richard O’Bannon reopened the case.

“It is still an open investigation, and even as of today we get leads every now and then,” he said.

He said he will miss the people, “The sheriff and all my coworkers,” when he leaves.

“I’ve been here 37 years, and for nine years I was right across the street, within 200 feet of the sheriff’s office, so I’ve spent my whole life here.”

Riggs said, however, he won’t be completely gone from the sheriff’s office.

“The sheriff said he’s going to keep me on as a reserve officer, and I’ll help with the boat operations and firearms training; I’ll still have a fingerprint. And I imagine somebody will be calling me about something.”

For the first few weeks of retirement, he said, he’ll get back active in the gym, and “I’m just going to hang out.

“I do want to go see my oldest child who is in the Netherlands. Her husband is in the Army, and so sometime this summer, I do want to go see her. Just visit with the children and grandchildren. I really don’t have any long-term plans.”

When he started with the sheriff’s office, Riggs didn’t think he would make it a career.

“I thought that eventually I’d go to the state or federal level in law enforcement,” he said.

“(But) I just enjoy Vicksburg, Warren County. I love the people, so it got to where leaving to go to the state or federal level went out; I felt my calling was to the citizens of Vicksburg and Warren County.”