Editors Note: This is the first of occasional stories profiling Grand County’s first responders

Officer Dodd Jacobsen of the Fraser-Winter Park Police Department is a Colorado native who at 15 went on a ride-along with an Arvada policeman; at 21 he became a police officer.

He is a firearms instructor and on the Middle Park ERT (SWAT) team. He has been working in law enforcement in Grand County for 13 years. He was gracious enough to answer our questions:

Can you read people by watching their body language or facial expression?

“You develop a natural knack for reading people when you spend enough time with them. I can tell when people are hiding something.”

How do you deal with some of the incidents of the past few years in Winter Park?

“You must do things outside of police work. You have to have a life outside it or you’ll burn out. When your mind is constantly running, you have to have a release.”

Officer Jacobsen enjoys his family, friends, and Italian motorcycles.

“There are highs and lows of the job, but it’s an opportunity to save lives. On duty you see the most horrible things but you are trained to deal with it. The town treats us well and they are employee-centric. That is what makes this work.”

Officer Jacobsen says that every member of the agency is community-oriented, “We are proud of what we do, protecting citizens.”