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Human of the Rocky Mountain Southwest: March 8, 2018

Our family moved here from Missouri in 1989. We had no job and no idea where we were going to end up. We had sold everything, bought an RV, and my wife and I and our two little kids headed across Kansas and ended up in Trinidad with an empty gas tank at dawn one Sunday morning. I had previously sent a resume to TSJC, so on Monday, I went to to see if they were still interested in a criminal justice instructor. On Wednesday, I did an interview, and on Friday I signed a teaching contract. During that time, I was also on the Trinidad Police Department.

Our adventure of traveling further was completely ruined. We really wanted to be ski bums because my wife, Cheryl, had done some mission work in Vail in the 70’s and she always wanted to come back.

We lived and worked in Trindad for six years, then in 1995 I took the Walsenburg Police Chief position. After two years, we went back to Missouri for 10 years, trading the mountains for the Mississippi River. Then after we became empty nesters, the mountains called again and I became Chief of Campus Police at Adams State University for a little over seven years.

We still had our home from 1995, but by now it had escaped all our efforts to sell for 25 years. Providentially, we had a paid-off house in the mountains.  We often sit on our deck and look at the Huajatollas and think we are living most people’s vacation.

I am a registered psycho-therapist, so I’m not licensed, but the state has given me a slot with their process so I can be held accountable. I don’t have a practice, per se, because I don’t take insurance, but I do continue to do pastoral counseling.

I also do some writing, one being a regular column for a financial law enforcement journal and have self -published some books. I am pastor at New Hope Community Church, and was recently appointed as municipal judge.

Between pastoring, writing and judging, that leaves me plenty of time for coffee. Coffee shop experiences have been an important part of our family. During our children’s teenage years, Cheryl and I found a coffee shop just a stone’s throw from the Mississippi River and that was our “living room.”  It’s hard to keep teens around the dinner table, but they would come down and meet their friends, we’d meet our friends, and we got to know the adults, our teenager’s friends, the owners, many in the community, and tourists from all over the world. It’s a wonderful place to be. The coffee culture is still a very big part of our family and when we explore new areas, we explore new coffee shops. Our son is a professor of jazz and classical saxophone, and our daughter is in training to become a behavioral therapist- and also has our only granddaughter, who is 10.

~ Joel Shults

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