By By LYDIA GRIMES – Features writer
Clair Sanborn, who is getting ready to retire, has seen a varied career in law enforcement, and then in adult education.
She was hired by Sheriff Scotty Byrne in 1975 as part of the SETA Program. She went through the police academy and in October of that year the Escambia County Juvenile Probation Office was created. She went to work there, along with Mike Godwin, and was there for over 10 years. She worked with the juvenile court judge and supervised intake probation. During that time the Tri-County Shelter Care and Outreach was established. They housed juveniles and had a suicide hot line.
There have been some unusual events and certainly some funny events in Sanborn's experiences.
time, Feast just took over and killed the snake. I guess he though we were taking too much time to kill it.”
Sanborn had gotten her master's degree in criminal justice at Troy University and she left Juvenile Probation to go back to school. Livingston had a program where she could get her master's degree in education. She got a chance to teach a couple of criminal justice classes. She had applied for a state job in the prison system and she was called to interview at Fountain Prison in Atmore as a classification specialist for the next two years. Then she had the opportunity to teach at Fountain in adult education. She went to work in 1990 with Atmore State Technical College (ASTC) as her employer. While she was teaching at Fountain, ASTC merged with Jefferson Davis Community College and she became an employee of JDCC and was also teaching there.
Sanborn is very proud of the different things she has done in her job, but probably none have touched her as much as establishing and being involved with the Youth Police Academy.
The Youth Academy has continued and every year it gets larger. They are now able to offer scholarships to those who can't afford the fee. This year will be the seventh year for the academy and will take place in July. They started with 10 youngsters and now have to limit it to 30 children. Volunteers come in to help and it can certainly be called a success.
Sanborn was born and raised in Brewton. She comes from a family of two sisters and one brother. Her grandfather founded Cooper Transfer Company. She attended T.R. Miller High School where she was a member of the band and several other clubs and organizations. She attended JDCC after high school and received the basics she needed to go to South Alabama. She planned to major in psychology but switched to criminal justice. She also worked for various truck lines to put herself through college.
She was married in 1976 while she was a probation officer. She was later divorced and she has one daughter, Beverly Foster, whose husband is a police officer with the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. She also has one granddaughter, Jordan Cali Foster, who is now one year old.