Many may know Karin Weihe as Tahoma High school’s security officer. But do you really know her, or know what her job was before coming to Tahoma High school?
Mrs. Weihe’s job as a security officer doesn’t look the same each day. But overall she said “I am over the safety and security of students and staff.” She makes sure that we are all ensured, safety at the school, and checks cameras for those coming in and out of the building. Mrs Weihe also says” We use the security cameras to catch people that roam often in the halls, and we also use them to catch people that could potentially be vaping in bathrooms.” Not only does she just check for cameras inside the building, but she also checks the camera for the student parking lot. She gives out many parking tickets each day, and checks for people that are speeding and being dumb in the parking lot. Or she gives parking tickets to kids parking in the wrong spots, or ones that don’t have passed. She also said” I not only am a security officer when school is going on, but also when there are plays, baseball games etc.” She goes on to say” You never know when there will be an intruder trying to sneak into a play or a game.” Students and staff here at Tahoma High school should most definitely be grateful for all the work she does to provide safety for all of us at school.
Before she was a security officer, she was a police officer for over 20 years. Not very many know what the hardest part of being a police officer really is. People may think that the hardest part going out into the scene of something dangerous or always putting their lives on the line, but for Karin Weihe, she said the hardest part of the job for her was “On patrol, the shifts were the hardest. 2 12-hour days and 2 hour nights. Sleep half of your first day as a first female officer for years with lots of advantages and disadvantages. Going to fertility, slides, seeing things you shouldn’t see that are hard to talk to.” not very many people realize that cops can’t legally talk about what happened outside of the office, but very many officers choose to be police officers because they want to try and make a difference in the world or where they live where we may not see it, but they really do try and help us as much as they could. For Karin Weihe, her answer for becoming a cop was a little bit more heart felt on her side, “I went to Bellevue and Bellevue, I took the criminal justice classes in at Bellevue, and it really spiked my interest at Bellevue were like you know you might want to start testing. It takes about 2 years from the time you start testing to the time you get hired, so once I was done with school, instead, I tested with fire and police or Issaquah called me back first. I went about. I guess it’s meant to be, yeah, so I took the job.”
Police officers don’t have very much time outside of work, but now being a security officer, she has much more time to support her two daughters. She gets to do the things she loves outside of work! Both daughters are very busy with different hobbies that they do outside of school, including one that does pro dirt-biking. She says that she travels a lot for that, and enjoys watching her daughter pursue her hobby. She also says that they have a cabin in Cle Elum that they love to go to often and ride dirt bikes together!
