Keeping Kids Safe
Driving through Glasgow as schools were dismissing, you may have seen Kevin Rigsby working as a crossing guard at Highland Elementary or Glasgow Middle School.
You may have seen him directing traffic at a high school ball game or at an intersection where a parade was passing.
If you’ve been fingerprinted for a background check while applying for a job in Barren County, Rigsby may have handled the fingerprinting.
He is not paid for this work.
Often, he completes a 12-hour shift on his regular job as a security officer at Glasgow’s T.J. Samson Hospital before donating his spare time serving as a school crossing guard or helping with other noncriminal assignments for the Glasgow Police Department.
The 43-year-old married father and member of Farmers RECC began serving as an auxiliary police officer in Glasgow in 1992, but is now a member of the VIPS program—Volunteers In Police Service.
“From a teenager on up, I was always interested in police work, but never chose it as a career,” Rigsby says. “I guess I felt I didn’t have the ability to take all the training that they have to do, and I guess I felt a little insecure about it.”
The death in 1990 of his younger brother, Eric, a passenger in a car involved in a reckless driving accident in a neighboring county, may also have helped draw Rigsby to volunteer police service.
Rigsby hopes that in some small way his volunteer efforts may help free up patrol officers to spend more time preventing deadly highway accidents.
“It’s kind of always in the back of my mind,” he says.
Glasgow Mayor Darrell G. Pickett calls Rigsby an asset to the police department and to the community. The assistant police chief, Lt. Col. James Duff, describes him as a hard-working, honest, “great guy who’d do anything he could for you.”
And what warms Rigsby’s heart on those icy winter afternoons when he is working as a crossing guard outside Glasgow Middle School?
“Some of those middle school children will come across there—and I wouldn’t even think they’d notice me, but more of them than you would think will stop and thank me.”
