Blue Earth County District 4 Commissioner Will Purvis will not seek re-election in November, the rural Vernon Center public servant said in a phone interview on Wednesday.
We had received a tip from a reader who had heard Purvis share his intentions at the most recent county Soil and Water Board meeting.
"I believe in term limits," he told Bluestem Prairie. Purvis was first elected to a four-year term in 2006, according to his campaign website. He serves Amboy, Good Thunder, Lake Crystal, Mankato Precinct 1 and 3, Vernon Center, and Cambria, Butternut Valley, Lincoln, Ceresco, Pleasant Mound, Judson, Garden City, Vernon Center, Shelby, South Bend, Lyra, Sterling, Rapidan Townships.
This is part of the state house district that elected Tony Cornish and Jeremy Munson. Purvis supported Munson's rival in the primary for special election that occurred when Cornish resigned after allegations of sexual harassment at the state capitol. We reported on his support in MN23B: Blue Earth Co Commish Will Purvis lavishes support for Sanders in new mail piece.
We met Purvis at an event on the Le Sueur River sponsored by CURE, where we were impressed by his thoughtfulness about erosion and water quality. Purvis lives on his family's farm where he was raised.
Before running for office, Purvis served in the Blue Earth County sheriff's department. The Mankato Free Press reported in Purvis takes on another form of service:
. . . Purvis was still a teenager, 19 to be exact, when he took his first job as a part-time police officer in Amboy while working on a law enforcement degree at Mankato State University. His first full-time job was in Osceola County, Iowa, where he worked for four years before returning to Blue Earth County to work for the next 27 years.
Many of those years were as a detective, working on cases ranging from burglaries to murders.
“Some of the most rewarding stuff has been the major cases — the people who went to prison for hurting people,” Purvis said. “There’s always personal satisfaction when you put someone in prison who needs to be in prison.”
His last case to go through the court system ended with a former Lake Crystal pastor pleading guilty to criminal sexual conduct with a parishioner. It was a crime the pastor, James Holthus, admitted to during an interview with Purvis.
It was a laid back, non-confrontational personality that gave Purvis the ability to get people to talk, said Capt. Rich Murry of the Blue Earth County Sheriff’s Department. Murry has worked with Purvis for a decade at the Sheriff’s Department and for another decade before that when Murry was a police officer in Mankato.
People, including suspects, were comfortable talking to Purvis, Murry said. That often led to convictions when the cases went to court.
It was a skill that couldn’t always be used, though, Purvis said.
“Dealing with child victims were always the toughest cases,” he said. “Those are the tough ones: When you know in your gut something happened, but there’s no physical evidence and the victim is too young to tell you what happened.
“I was so fortunate, or unfortunate, to work on so many cases. There’s probably more than I care to remember.”
That ability to communicate also has been put to use helping kids through the D.A.R.E. program at several area elementary schools, Murry said. Teaching kids about the dangers of drug abuse was also one of the jobs Purvis listed as a career highlight.
“You could get cynical working with all those felonies,” Purvis said. “The kids always kept you grounded.”
The one incident that has become legendary among local law enforcement officers is the day Purvis, while on lunch break, was forced to shoot a man while responding to an armed bank robbery in North Mankato. He talks about the situation pretty freely these days (it happened about 16 years ago), but it hasn’t always been that way.
It was a life and death situation, Purvis’ co-workers said, that ended with Purvis returning fire through the bed of a pickup truck. The suspect was killed.
Deputy Tom Coulter was a student at Minnesota State University when Purvis came to his law enforcement class about police stress to talk about the situation. He told the students about how the shooting affected him and his family.
“I’ve been very impressed with how he’s handled that situation over the years,” Murry added. “It’s something no cop wants to go through.”
Another story Murry, Coulter and other deputies like to tell is the one about Purvis’ plan to keep liquor store cashiers from complaining about entrapment after being busted for selling booze to minors.
Underage buyers were told to give their real age and real identification if asked. Sometimes they also wore ball caps that said, “Blue Earth County Sheriff’s Department Alcohol Compliance Team.” About a dozen people ignored the hats and sold liquor to minors.
Purvis told Bluestem Prairie that he'll continue to be involved in the community, but as a volunteer. He and his wife are very involved in their church, he said.
Given the number of people who had in the past had expressed interest in running were he to retire, Purvis thought that strong field of candidates would emerge in the race to fill the empty seat.
Purvis tells us he'll be meeting with the Mankato Free Press's Trey Mewes tomorrow. We'll link to Mewes' story here when it appears.
Here's the Mankato Free Press article: Purvis to retire from Blue Earth County Board
Photo: Will Purvis, via his campaign website.
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