Sammamish Police Chief Nate Elledge always tells people that working in Sammamish has been one of the most enjoyable jobs he’s ever had.

“It’s a great place to work and it’s why I’ve stuck around so long,” Elledge said. “Prior to coming here, I think the longest I’d stayed in any assignment was about three years. That’s one of the cool things about police work; there’s so much variety and different things you can do.”

It’s that variety his line of work provides that will lead Elledge to his next task. At the end of September, Elledge will step down as Sammamish police chief after seven years on the job. He will take over as chief of the King County Airport Aircraft Rescue Firefighters and Police at Boeing Field in Seattle.

Elledge, who has worked with the King County Sheriff’s Office for 27 years, alerted city staff in July of his interest in his next position, which like his current position as Sammamish police chief, is contracted through the Sheriff’s Office. Captain Michelle Bennett, also with the Sheriff’s Office, is expected to take over as police chief on Oct. 1.

City Manager Lyman Howard said the city will miss Elledge’s steady presence in the police department.

“Nate has been a phenomenal police chief just from the word go and he will be sorely missed,” Howard told the Reporter. “He has just done a fabulous job for us and the citizens of Sammamish.”

Elledge calls the change a lateral move, but one that offers him a new kind of leadership opportunity.

“I wanted to try something a little bit different,” he said. “I’ve been doing [leadership] for so long, but now I get to take these leadership skills and apply them to something totally different. I’m going to be doing aircraft firefighter training and fire administration training, those are things that are brand new to me. And I love airplanes. The opportunity to work down at the airport and be around aircraft and learn something new to me just sounds really cool.”

Before overseeing the quieter streets of Sammamish, Elledge worked undercover in the King County Sheriff’s Burien precinct. He said his undercover work entailed everything from robbery arrests to homicide arrests. As a detective sergeant, he worked on the Green River homicide investigations.

“I was the supervisor of a vice sting we were doing down in the south end and we picked up Gary Ridgway. He was soliciting a prostitute that turned out to be a decoy police officer,” Elledge said. “That from there led to my being accepted into the Green River task force.”

But it was during Elledge’s stint working undercover that he found he may have to transition to something different in his line of work.

“My daughter, who’s an adult now, was about 4 years old at the time and said, ‘Daddy, when are you going to start coming home at nighttime?'” Elledge recalled. “I realized then that my time on the street is probably limited and it was probably time to start looking at a more administrative job.”

Elledge was promoted to captain after his work with the Green River homicides and has been working as an administrator ever since. He took over as Sammamish police chief in June 2009. It was the second time he applied for the position, originally applying in 2006 and coming in second to predecessor Brad Thompson.

Elledge said what drew him to becoming police chief was being out in the forefront of the community.

“It’s been excellent,” he said. “If you look at all the things that we’ve done here in the last seven years, Sammamish is ranked nationally for its low crime rate and one of the most livable cities in several national rankings. The police department consistently gets high marks for customer service when they send out surveys to residents in Sammamish. I think that’s pretty unusual for a police department these days. Because I got such a great crew working for me and it’s such a great community, I think it’s been a win-win situation for everybody and it’s been a lot of fun.”

Working in a community with low crime also has some drawbacks. Elledge said property crime is an ongoing issue that the department has a hard time curbing. Even in safer cities, the police have to remind people to lock their cars and secure their valuables. He added that keeping up with growth has been his biggest challenge in Sammamish, though he believes his department has done a good job with it.

During his tenure in Sammamish, Elledge said one of the things he was most proud of was his work to combat youth impaired driving. Sammamish resident Pat Castillo worked with Elledge through Influence the Choice – Drug Prevention Alliance for Youth, an initiative of the Issaquah Schools Foundation. Castillo said Elledge was one of the “key leaders representing Sammamish” in the alliance and called him “a pillar in the community.”

“What I most admired about him was that he was so community-focused,” she said. “In our case, it was always about the youth and how can we help the youth stay drug-free.”

With a workload that commands a lot of meetings, paperwork and policy review, Elledge said his favorite part of the job is simply getting out to talk and interact with people.

“That’s why you get into this job, really. You like to meet people and you meet people from all different walks of life,” he said. “There are days, not often but a few times out of the year, where I’ll come and just stand out in front of a Starbucks and have a coffee and let anybody who wants to come up and talk to me. It’s fun to hear what people have to say and you get different perspectives on things.”

Police don’t always get positive feedback from those in the community, nor is the national news about police always positive. Elledge admits it can be stressful to hear people say negative things “and you know that you’re trying your best to do the right thing.”

“I think the perception of cops is maybe the mirrored glasses and the black gloves,” he said. “When you get behind that, knowing cops like I have my entire adult life, they really do care about what they do and they do try to make a difference.”

But in his community of the last seven years, Elledge has managed to downplay such an image. He acknowledged the value of stepping down from a position he enjoys on a high note.

“It’s been a real positive experience for me and I really like it,” he said. “But it’s time to turn over to someone else and try something new, that’s really my motivation.”