After completing a law enforcement-based internship at a small state park this past summer, it struck me that, unlike being a judicial or finance intern behind a desk hunched over a computer, nothing I had learned at Princeton sufficiently prepared me for a job requiring face-to-face confrontations, real-world leadership, law enforcement procedure, or anything else that wasn’t “book smarts.”
That’s partially what this article is about. It’s the story of a college kid with “hands-on” training working closely with law enforcement officers —and even enforcing certain regulations himself. I hope to testify on behalf of all law enforcement officers and to underline how lucky we are to have valiant men and women uphold our nation’s social contract.
17:00 to 01:00 and 18:00 to 02:00 were when the rangers worked. The co-superintendent of the park, Tim, handled day security. I enjoyed the night shift; the weather and sunsets were great, and most importantly, the action was abundant. The mix of darkness and patrolling for illicit activity replenished my adrenaline levels after a spring semester of sitting in front of a computer for 10 hours a day. I was getting into a routine fairly quickly: remembering to lock the safe, coding all the after-hour sales, getting confident in approaching people, and adjusting my sleep schedule.
Adam and Tucker, the two other staffed rangers, had been patiently training me. I say patiently because I had taken an hour to read carefully through Tim’s field manual, been given my uniform, and then was cut loose. For the sake of stating the obvious, there were many gaps to fill. The contents of the binder and my coworkers were straightforward and useful. They testified to those who had worked at the park, the closest to a large metropolitan area, for decades.
5/10/2025 – 23:05 – Whitewood Campground Day Use Area
Tucker was the laziest of my two trainers. As I got more confident in my ability, he waited in the truck while I got “practice” handling contacts with individuals violating park regulations. Around 23:00, we rolled into a section of the park called Whitewood, notorious for high activity.
Noticing a fire off in the distance, Tucker ordered me to make contact with the individual and tell them that the park had closed at 22:00. I got out of the truck quietly with my maglight in hand and strolled silently to speak with whom I presumed to be a river watcher or stargazer. I got closer and flicked on my flashlight, boldly announcing myself: “Good evening, this is a state park ranger.” I walked parallel with the sitting individual until, after getting close enough to see clearer my heart almost beat out of my chest. I was staring face-to-face with a man who had feathers in his beard, blood smeared on his shirt and arms, and a small mammal skull in his hands. What appeared to be a small fire had actually been ignited, kindling beneath chopped log rounds stacked at least 4 feet high.
He stared at me emotionlessly and said to me very calmly: “Can I help you, park ranger?”
My voice struggled to escape my throat, and I managed to squeak out, “What are you doing, sir?”
He replied, “I am praying.”
After briefly getting over the fear that my skull would be the next thing in his hands, I informed him, “Sir, the park is closed, you have to pack up and leave.” He protested, asking me to make an exception since he was having a rough time, and that he “needed to get reconnected with his spirit.” I could tell by the tarp and blanket adjacent to the fire that he was planning on sleeping in the park.
I quickly shut the idea down. “We make no exceptions; you need to pack up before we return in 20 minutes,” I told him. For obvious reasons, I emphasized the we.
I backpedaled to the truck, sure not to take my eyes off the man. When I returned, I told Tucker everything. “Why didn’t you call for me?” he asked. Hearing this question annoyed me. Following that night, I learned that although teamwork is crucial for the success and safety of law enforcement, the only person who could ever fully have your back in a crazy or dangerous situation is yourself; a situation like being in the woods at night with an animal ritualist.
Learning this came in handy, given that a few days later, I started doing full security shifts by myself, with no one else on duty. My annoyance with Tucker didn’t stop me from making him drive me back to my personal car that night, just in case that psycho animal killer was there lying in wait for me. Growing up near the park, I had heard stories of hikers stumbling across hanging animals in the trees. I’m thoroughly convinced after that night that all of those stories are true.
The next day, I told Tim about the encounter, and he gave me a piece of advice that hadn’t been in the field manual,
“Don’t go into the woods at night without a gun.”
Ironically, it was often the weekdays that held the most action. I had countless instances of being underprepared, naive, scared, and other times just flat out lucky. Below are a few of many possible examples.
7/25/25 – 17:01 – Swim Lake
“You’re some fucking hero ranger boy,” a man screamed while I walked back to my Game-and-Parks-issued Ford F-250. I had been attempting to call the man to shore for 20 minutes after the grounds crew had alerted me of a swimmer past the buoys. When I arrived, the man was so far out that I could hardly see his head sticking out of the water. I called back the young children who had caught on and were valiantly creeping towards the buoy line, into 8+ feet of murky, deep, log-ridden, water. Meanwhile, the man continued to ignore my shouts as he gleefully backstroked across the lake. I returned to my work truck and grabbed the megaphone from my passenger seat. I repeated my command into the megaphone, and I finally heard back:
“What the fuck do you want, jerk? I’m coming back, so calm the fuck down.”
After deciding to take the scenic route back, I approached the water and asked the man to come talk to me. Once again, he ignored me, so I turned the megaphone back on and restated myself. Before I could finish my sentence, the man ignited into a fit of rage and started slapping the water, saying,
“I’m a damn U.S. Navy veteran, I can do what I please when it comes to water”.
This momentarily made me freeze. I’ve always viewed service members highly, and on top of that, I could tell the man had no trouble swimming. Sensing the silence around me, I stated, “Thank you for your service, but rules are rules, especially when it comes to water safety. Being a Navy veteran, you of all people should know this.” The guy’s face looked more provoked than the wasp nests I had been removing from cabin porches earlier that day. His mouth oozed with more provocative language, and in return, I kicked him out of the park. I stormed back to the parking lot as he cussed me out further.
At this moment, I wanted to explode. I wanted to curse him right back, to give him a piece of my mind. This anger disappeared when I looked down at my uniform and saw the game and parks patch. After all, this was what I had signed up to earn less than a wage at McDonald’s for. I reassured myself that I had done the right thing by deterring those kids from a possible tragedy, and for upholding the posted rules of the park.
The man, his wife, and his two children all flipped me off and scowled as they drove by. They represent an ideology of many park goers, and in general, many people in the geographic area I call home: law enforcement is not your friend; they ruin a good time. This was a typical attitude when we enforced many basic state park regulations, many of which I myself disagreed with. Some of these included no radios after 22:00, no alcohol on the swim beach, no entering the park without a pass, and no fishing without a license. These laws were often met with protest, or worse, a storm of cursing.
6/30/25 – 18:28 – Whitewood Campground
Their truck, a beat-up and rusted-out Ford, looked a few speed bumps away from a scrapyard. As Adam and I rolled down our windows, I asked, “What are you doi–” before being cut off by a woman shrieking, “I FOUND A BRAND NEW COOLER!!” The cooler in question, a blue medium-sized Ozark Trail model that Walmart sells, admittedly looked to be in pretty good shape. The party explained they had been hanging out, and while discarding trash, one of them caught a glimpse of the treasure. I shrugged it off, ready to let them continue their ventures, but Adam asserted, “You guys can’t dumpster dive here. If that’s all you’re here for, then you have to leave.” They listened, tossed the cooler in the back of their truck, crammed 5 people into a single-door cab, and after a few engine knocks, went on their way.
This was another underlying attitude of the park. The gritty nature of shameless and hardworking lower-class rural folk who took pride in self-sufficiency. There was no embarrassment of dumpster diving for a cooler, or catching and eating fish out of a lake, or taking a shower in the river, or anything else that the more ‘cultivated’ American may raise an eyebrow at. This mentality of gritty self-sufficiency is what I loved about the park, and what I love about rural America.
7/9/25 – 19:22 – Swim Lake
In an effort to engage youth and fight the boredom of slow days, I routinely handed out booklets containing every fish species in Nebraska. Almost always, youngsters would accept these small booklets as if they were some invaluable treasure. Only once did I ever do this at the request of a parent.
This parent, Gina, had approached my truck window after I made her pour out an open container of alcohol on the swim beach. Gina asked me to speak with her young daughter to relay to her that law enforcement officers weren’t “bad people”. I quickly asserted that I was not law enforcement, but rather a college student doing an internship. Gina replied, “That doesn’t matter; what matters is that you’re wearing a uniform.”
After a moment of hesitation, I exited the truck and awkwardly walked up to the young girl. I offered her one of the books and opened it to the page containing largemouth bass, a species stocked in the swim lake. I told her, “If you ever wanted to fish, the park has spare poles for kids to use.” A big toothless smile appeared on her face, and she ran back to her mom for a hug.
As I drove away, I thought about how the park seemed to be a coming-together place for all people of all backgrounds. Poor, rich, city slickers, country folk, Republicans, Democrats, Asians, Blacks, Hispanics, Whites, and everything in between. In the guard booth that night, I realized that the Park was almost a little version of America in a way. It had a set of rules, lots of freedoms, a diverse crowd. I thought about the things that went through people’s heads as I approached them in uniform and how they were probably very different from my own thoughts. I chuckled to myself as I looked up and saw a sheriff deputy cruiser roll through the gates. The real cop had shown up for a quick nightly lap around the park. Whether those quick laps were comforting or fear-instilling, I still do not know.
6/17/25 – 18:32 – Equestrian Trail
Tim’s warning to not enter the woods at night without a gun had stuck with me, but during the day, I found it relatively harmless. Bored and out of tasks, I noticed a pickup parked halfway out of sight behind the trees. Seeing that it had no park pass, and with nothing better to do, I decided to enter the woods and look around.
I walked about a tenth of a mile through the dense greenery, carefully eyeing for Lone Star ticks and poison ivy. As I scaled over a downed tree and reached the riverbank, I didn’t see anything or anyone. Just then, I heard a slight rustle to my left, so I quietly moved that way. All of a sudden, I heard a low growl. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I fumbled for my mace. Sure enough, a dog bolted towards me, and through the clearing, I made eye contact with a man, fully naked and erect, lying on his back on top of a quilt. The dog’s trajectory waned, and disgusted, I yelled, “You need to get dressed and get the fuck out of here.” I hustled down the trail and took a picture of the guy’s license plates. I contacted the Game Warden, who later that day paid a visit to the man’s house.
7/2/25 – 22:56 – Day Use River parking
Humans weren’t the only mischievous creatures in the park. Adam and Tucker had told me about a deer they called Bartholomew, which one night had followed the patrol truck around. In short, they assumed the deer was actually a skin walker, which was not a good thought to have in your head when you hear things rustling in a dark treeline.
I momentarily thought about their story as I slammed on the brakes of my truck. I had seen a glistening pair of eyes bolt in front of me, then freeze as I drove over it. I got out to investigate, and it turned into a 20-minute game of trying to catch a stray baby raccoon. After managing to scoop him into my lunchbox without contracting rabies, I let him go, and he scuttled up a tree.
There was an abundant ecosystem in the park, one you would have never noticed if you had just kept on driving down the highway. Dozens of species of flowers and insects, and amphibians, of which Tucker loved to tell me for hours on end. For all he knew, I wouldn’t be surprised if Princeton one day tenured him in the EEB department.
6/18/25 – 20:00 – Whitewood Campground
I had just gotten the mower cleaned and parked. I sprinted to my truck, threw on my uniform, and whipped the truck out of the shop lot. The sky was a sinister green, and the wind was upwards of 50 MPH. Blowing past the office, raindrops the size of quarters were quickly overpowering my windshield wipers. I headed straight into Whitewood, the tent-only campground. I arrived at a warzone. Tarps, coolers, picnic baskets, and other things were all over the place. I parked the truck and ran to help a woman trying to wrestle an airborne tent to the ground, then sprinted over to a family trying to stuff all of their things and children into the back of a Toyota Prius.
This was common in Nebraska during midsummer. Hot and dry one second, stormy and humid the next. I have never feared the weather, despite the power of Mother Nature during tornado season on the plains.
7/7/25 – 19:41 – Guard Booth
A catch-22. That’s what my boss John called the situation I found myself in. 30 minutes earlier, a Tesla had exited the park going upwards of 80 MPH with a massive blacked-out diesel truck in hot pursuit. When the Tesla crossed park lines, the truck’s brakes slammed, and a massive man got out and screamed, “If that motherfucker ever comes back, I’ll shoot him dead.”
I approached the man, who claimed that the Tesla driver had almost run over his kids. He said he had cornered the Tesla in a grass field, but the Tesla had managed to escape. As he rambled, he stated, “There would be hell to pay,” if the driver returned.
I couldn’t blame the guy for being angry, but I could tell there was something sincere in his voice about his intentions if the driver returned. I largely brushed it off, figuring he was just talking, and that the Tesla driver was long gone. I couldn’t have been more wrong about either.
My heart dropped when I saw the Tesla tear back down the road 15 minutes later. He almost ran the stop sign and hit me as I stepped into the road, as I usually did to speak with vehicles making entry. He rolled down his window, and I informed him that he was not welcome back into the park after his criminal speed and reckless driving that I had witnessed. As he argued with me, I could easily tell he was under the influence. I told him that if he entered the park driving under the influence, the authorities would be notified.
Just then, I saw the massive man barreling towards the car, screaming at the top of his lungs, “I am going to kill him, tell him to get the fuck out of the car.” At once, I ordered the man to turn around, and advised him he better do it quickly because a not-so-happy man was sprinting towards us. He looked in his mirror, ripped the car into drive, accelerated into the park, and once again almost ran me over.
I sprinted to my truck and moved it in front of the park exit. There was one road into the park, and one road out, both passing the guard booth. Next, I called 911, told them about the drunk driver, his recklessness, and the brewing altercation between the men. Next, I called my boss, John, and told him the situation. He arrived two minutes later. Glaring at me, he said in a stern voice, “We’ll talk about you calling the cops later.” I had broken a park rule, and I had called the cops before the park superintendent about an issue in the park. I couldn’t have cared less about that rule at the moment, and after almost being run over twice and caught in between a possible mauling of the Tesla driver, I couldn’t have cared less if I had lost my job for it.
Five minutes later, John came back to the park exit following the car, which sped by the hillbilly and down the road. Little did the driver know, deputies were waiting down the road for him. He was charged with DUI, reckless driving, and resisting arrest.
I largely share this report to emphasize that alcohol was almost as abundant as air in the park. The number of minors in possession, drinking on the roadways, and other law-breaking activities revolving around the use of alcohol was mind-boggling. Some instances were flat out disturbing, like the time Adam and I argued with a mother we’d kicked out of the park for letting her 13-year-old daughter openly drink a vodka seltzer in a no-alcohol zone.
But alcohol paraphernalia wasn’t the only thing lurking in the park. Several times, I dealt with individuals on hard drugs. A few included watching sheriffs arrest a group of 4 people high on meth — 3 of whom had active warrants— after a camper complained of them howling, climbing trees, and trying to break into their RV. Another was cleaning up a crack pipe that had been reported. I was sarcastically told “to wear rubber gloves” when I asked my boss, John, how to clean it up.
08/02/2025 – 08:00
The day after I turned in my keys and uniform, a bad storm hit the park. A tree fell on top of a car that a camper was using to wait out the storm, and they were crushed and killed. Reading this news article, I realized just how fortunate I was to walk away in good health. There were countless nights I was alone in the dark, dozens of days filled with inclement weather, and many encounters with overly aggressive individuals, yet I had walked away physically unscathed. I remembered a statistic from a book that I had picked up one day while in the office: National Park rangers are 12 times more likely to die in the line of duty than FBI special agents. Granted, I wasn’t a National Park ranger, and I didn’t have to deal with things like being mauled by a bear. But, I was still in the constant environment of the all-powerful Mother Nature.
As I’ve started to think about my path after Princeton, I’ve thought deeply about the heroism and bravery it takes for someone to work a low-paid, excruciating, and dangerous job in law enforcement. Without brave men and women to fill these roles, ready to face danger and even death, society would certainly be in peril.
I also thought back to the many park-goers who told me off, the people who viewed an approaching uniformed officer as an enemy to their liberties. Truthfully, I recognized they had valid concerns. I myself was in that same group of people before I worked at the park. I hated the idea of having to pay for a yearly license to fish or to spend hard-earned money to go walking along the river. Before working at a state park, I viewed its costs of entry as a greedy scheme to confiscate even more money from the pockets of taxpayers.
This all changed when I started working at the park. I learned that 95% of the park’s budget was generated by the sales it made. I learned that the park, by collecting small payments from many people, created great opportunities for all contributors to enjoy. This included the restocking of fish every spring, electricity and water lines for camp sites, youth classes, and even a brand new dump station that anyone with a park pass could access. This, paired with the selfless employees who made the park run, made me enthusiastic to catch the free-riders whom I had once sided with.
In fact, after the nicknames and teasing of being a newbie from the Ivy League wore off, I gained the nickname Rambo. For better or worse, this was largely because my bosses got annoyed with me having an entire page of a security report sitting on their desk the following morning. They claimed I was being a heckler for making unauthorized park goers return to the office and buy park passes, or that I got into too many confrontations with visitors in violation of park regulations. Looking back, I was certainly ambitious. However, I still dissent from their claims of me being a heckler despite my strong advocacy of personal liberties, free will, and individualism.
Being a park ranger this summer gave me insight into the selflessness and sacrifice put forth by law enforcement agents and civil servants. For a job that handed me more stories and lessons than I can count, the overarching lesson was simple: behind every rule stands a community worth protecting, and those who uphold this integrity carry out an honorable duty.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
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