Page 38 - AreaNewsletters "Mar 2022" issue

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Another favorite Hammond story involved a young man who saw a woman he liked at a dance hall. He found out where she lived, got into her bedroom, took o all
of his clothes and waited
under her bed for her to
come home from the dance.
When she walked into her
bedroom, the naked and
inebriated guest jumped
out at her! The sheri was called, and when he arrived, the man was in the bed with covers pulled up to his chin. The sheri ordered him to get out of the bed and get dressed. The man refused so the sheri grabbed him by the arm, and walked him, naked as a jay bird, in foot-deep snow to the sheri ’s car and on to jail. The next day the headline in the Elizabeth newspaper said, “Wildcat Sheri of Douglas County: Naked or Clad, He Jails Them Anyway.”
An undated newspaper article tells
the story of Sheri Hammond and his wife being guests at a lovely home on Charlou Drive in Englewood (that part now known as Cherry Hills) to meet
the actor, James Arness, the famed Marshal Matt Dillon of the iconic and long-running TV Western favorite “Gunsmoke”. There were 200 people present, including Governor McNichols, former Governor Ed Johnson and Bob Roberts from KLZ-TV, the Denver CBS a liate. Hammond presented Arness
a beautiful gold deputy badge, made and donated by Sachs Lawler, on behalf
of the Colorado Sheri s’ and Peace O cers’ Association.
There was no jailer, and one time a prisoner set the bed on re. He died of smoke inhalation before anyone could get him out. After that the commissioners hired a jailer who got paid $80 a month to stay at the jail
and watch prisoners.
Not all of Hammond’s adventures were so lighthearted. During the 1965 Plum Creek ood, he rescued Lawrence Liggett from a truck trapped in the rising oodwaters using just a rope he fortunately kept in his trunk.
When Royal McKinster was elected sheri in 1972, there was a minor skirmish regarding Hammond’s radio—which the county nally paid for years later for the new sheri ’s use.
Hammond
remembered
that he had a
county-owned
vehicle and a
few deputies
during his
last two years
in o ce. An
undated organizational chart of the Douglas County Sheri ’s O ce shows John Hammond as the Sheri and the Undersheri as Danny Danforth. Other
March 2022 • Castle Rock “AreaNewsletters”
38
Sheri Hammond’s Crime Diary
CASTLE ROCK HISTORY