|
|
|
|
Beach, Buffet love of leader |
|
Friday, 26 February 2010 |
By KAREN CAMPBELL
Assistant Managing Editor
To escape the stress that comes with being the commander of the Wapakoneta Post of the Ohio State Highway Patrol, the lieutenant likes to think of the island life.
On most days when someone walks into the office of Scott Carrico, Jimmy Buffett tunes are playing. Pictures of the beach and ocean from cruises he has taken hang on the wall and are framed around his desk.
“It relaxes me,” Carrico said. “This job is stressful and it takes me somewhere else, somewhere warmer.”
He said beach music is pretty much playing all of the time, whether he’s at work, in the car or at his house. He started as a self-described Beach Boys fan and has seen them in concert as many as five times.
Carrico, 40, grew up in South Point, the southernmost point of Ohio, along the Ohio River.
When he graduated from the Highway Patrol Academy in 1990, Carrico knew he could not return to where he was grew up, because his father was a sergeant there, and he was ready to see another part of the state.
Carrico said he looked for a post in District 5, where he could start out with his own car as part of a trial program, and that had both interstate and rural areas. He was assigned to his top choice, Wapakoneta.
“I had to pull the map out to figure out where Wapakoneta was,” Carrico said. “I’ve made it home ever since.”
He spent 13 years at this post as a trooper before he was promoted to assistant post commander in Piqua in 2003 and then came back as commander in 2007. Carrico said it was a career goal he set for himself when he started the job at Wapakoneta to one day be commander of his first post.
Growing up, Carrico worked during summers as a lifeguard in Ashland, Ky., before starting as a cadet dispatcher a few months after graduating high school in 1987.
“I didn’t want to be at first, but I think I was destined to be in the highway patrol,” Carrico said.
At the time he joined as a cadet dispatcher, Carrico was attending Marshall University where he was a walk-on to the track team, but he didn’t know what type of career to pursue and he didn’t like sitting in the classroom.
In 1990, when he was old enough to attend the academy he did, turning the required age of 21 just a month before graduating from it.
“Once I got into it, I knew it would be the career for me,” Carrico said. “It’s something different every day. Once you leave the post, your vehicle is a moving office and the freedom that goes with that and essentially being your own boss and deciding where you’re going to go each day.”
He said after growing up around the Highway Patrol, he’s essentially been in it for 41 years.
“I still remember being a little kid and my dad doing it,” Carrico said. “I loved it to death. Growing up I think every kid wants to drive a car with lights on it at some point.”
He and his wife, Sharon, whom he started dating in 1987 when they were both still in high school have been married 15 years.
“She knew when I went into the patrol that we would not be back in southern Ohio,” Carrico said. “We’ve made this home for us. Our kids haven’t known anything else.”
Carrico helps coach his children’s sports teams — Kasey is 12 and Ryan is 9 — when he can whether it be baseball, flag football or soccer.
“One way or another I will be involved,” Carrico said. “With my job it is kind of hard to take a head coaching role, but I usually can help as an assistant coach.
“We like to let them get involved however they can because it keeps us involved in the community,” he said.
When he’s not helping his children’s teams or spending almost every day during the summer cheering them on, Carrico said he likes to do the normal dad stuff, take the children fishing, mow the yard and take care of things around the house. When the weather’s nice he also likes to fly model airplanes in and around the backyard.
The family has two dogs, Casha, a German Shephard, and a new addition to the family, Palmer the pomeranian, whom the Carricos started watching for a friend and have ended up keeping.
An avid sports fan, Carrico said he likes college sports the best, particularly the Ohio State Buckeyes and Marshall Thundering Herd.
He and Ryan escape to their “man cave” in the basement as much as possible and play Xbox online with his friends and their fatherss.
Carrico said they play a lot of sports games and Modern Warfare and once the boys have gone to bed the fathers often stay up playing and socializing. Of course, now that his 9-year-old is getting better than him at the games, Carrico does not like to play as much.
At least once a year the family tries to take a vacation together, often with a couple of other families to a place like Myrtle Beach, S.C.
Every couple of years, Carrico and his wife take a Carnival cruise with a group of approximately 14.
“We’ve been on six now,” Carrico said. “About anywhere a ship goes I’ve been,” he said listing off tropical destinations including Cozumel, Jamaica, Barbados, St. Thomas and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
He said economically the all-inclusive cruises make sense, but what really appeals to him is the island life.
“If I could pack up all my stuff now and go somewhere where it’s warm with a palm tree and sand I would,” Carrico said. “That’s the place everybody should be.”
While that’s his ultimate goal when the children are grown, Carrico said he’d settle for anywhere warm and only time will tell where life circumstances dictate he will be. But if not living somewhere warmer, he hopes he is visiting every year.
Having just returned from a cruise where temperatures were 85 degrees, he said he was not disappointed to have missed 14 inches of snow.
“I don’t just want to see Ohio,” Carrico said of experiences such as snorkeling with sting rays and traveling on zip lines through rain forests that can’t be done here.
While he thinks the children enjoy staying with friends and getting rid of their parents for a week, Carrico said he hopes someday they’ll join them.
|
|
Last Updated ( Monday, 01 March 2010 )
|
|
Come to Compare Cards on-line for deals on the prepaid credit cards that are safest for you. |
|
|
|
