jbulger@journalnet.com

POCATELLO - For the last 10 years of his 38-year career with Union Pacific, Terry Shumway was a conductor. For the last three, he has been a different kind of conductor as a volunteer with the Pocatello Police Department and the Neighborhood Watch program.

Shumway, 60, is one of the friendly faces citizens encounter when they visit the Pocatello Police Department. Ensconced at the desk in the station's front lobby every Friday, Shumway, along with longtime friend Michael Wheelock, provide information and direct citizens with questions or complaints to the appropriate person within the department.

Friday's job is but a small part of the community service Shumway engages in. He is a block captain with the Neighborhood Watch, and is now the zone leader of nine zones, supervising 185 volunteers who serve as area leaders and block captains in the program. He also serves as vice president of the program.

He is one of eight members of the citizen's advisory board, a group which provides feedback to Pocatello Police Chief J.R. Miller. He is a member of the Community Emergency Response Team. He is … well, the list goes on.

"I love it," Shumway said. "It keeps me busy out of the house so I don't get in trouble."

Kim Ellis, the department's community services assistant, smiles at this, remembering the wife of one volunteer who offered her thanks for the department giving her husband a hobby and offering her definition of retirement: Twice as much husband and half as much pay.

While some retirees enjoy the luxury of no longer having to get up for work at the crack of dawn, Shumway and Wheelock are up and at it three days a week, setting out the department's speed reader radar trailer by 7 a.m. in different locations around city roadways.

Recently, Ellis nominated Shumway for the Idaho Crime Prevention Association's volunteer of the year. In his letter of recommendation, Ellis listed the hours Shumway has volunteered from October 2007 through September 2008 - call taker, 140 hours; radar trailer, 74 hours; Neighborhood Watch coordination, 85 hours; and performing various administrative chores, 166 hours. All told, Shumway put in 466 volunteer hours in the year's span.

"There's nobody in the state who's come even close to him," Ellis said.

Last Monday, Shumway was named the recipient of the award. He almost missed the ceremony in Boise, due to a baby-sitting commitment with his two grandchildren. Ellis, who had not told Shumway that he had nominated him, had to spill the beans in order to get Shumway to accompany him to Boise for the ceremony.

The ramifications of Shumway's award are not lost on him.

"Well, I was told I'd get a raise," he said. "The current salary is nothing. Zero. They're going to double it."