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Meet Kevin Heuser
Operations Chief of Law Enforcement and Emergency Services
Kevin Heuser, Operations Chief of Law Enforcement and Emergency Services, began his career with the National Park Service at Sandy Hook in 1990 as a seasonal fee collector.
A year later he decided to pursue law enforcement and attended Southwestern Community College in North Carolina, one of five colleges around the county that offer mandatory park ranger seasonal training in the field of law enforcement. This was followed by two seasons of part-time employment at Sandy Hook and then engagement as a term employee. In Kevin’s case it was a four-year term, which turned into a job in dispatch. After 9/11, Kevin applied for a job at the Guilford Courthouse National Park in Greensboro, North Carolina, but ultimately Kevin followed his heart back to Sandy Hook. “It’s always been about Sandy Hook,” says Kevin, where he is in charge of three supervisors, nine permanent staff, and ten seasonal rangers, although last summer Kevin only had five. Like so many other industries and businesses, the National Park Service has suffered a decline in personnel for both seasonal and permanent positions within the park.
According to Kevin, over half of all annual incidents at Sandy Hook occur at just one beach area, but his team is kept busy throughout the year making sure the 2.3M people who visit are safe and protected in all areas of the park. Despite being an alcohol-free park, alcohol-related incidents are on the rise, followed by vandalism of historic structures and buildings, especially spray painting. His team works in three eight-hour shifts, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Although Sandy Hook has opening and closing hours, on any given day people are in and using the park, including fishermen with permits and campers at Camp Gateway. Other occurrences that might not immediately come to mind, but that Kevin and his team address on a daily basis, include visitors who think it’s okay to kick a goose, people who don’t adhere to the fishing bag limits, and occasional domestic disturbances or lewd behavior in parking lots. A certified EMT, Kevin is also called upon to support the lifeguards and administer CPR to disabled swimmers. Kevin and his team must also be up to speed in practicing “active shooter drills” as they are responsible for the protection of the students at the Marine Academy of Science and Technology located on Sandy Hook, and Kevin’s team also serves as first responders to schools in the adjacent towns of Highlands and Sea Bright. To more effectively address some of the issues, Sandy Hook plans to reinstate its bicycle patrol program where park service law enforcement rangers can more easily access remote areas of the park. Recently a fleet of new outfitted bicycles has been delivered to Sandy Hook in anticipation of the relaunch.
As you drive into the park, many people remember stopping at the ranger station located in the middle of the road just past Beach Area E. Before Hurricane Sandy, this was the hub of law enforcement on Sandy Hook and where dispatch was located. When the building was destroyed in the superstorm, their operations became decentralized which is something he says makes the job tougher today. Dispatch is now handled from the park’s headquarters in Staten Island.
Kevin’s words of advice to visitors are to listen to the lifeguards. If they say “clear the beach” then please do, and follow the rules about swimming at unguarded beaches.
Upon his retirement this November, Kevin plans to join his wife Jeanne, a retired National Park Service Biological Technician at Sandy Hook, at the home they are building in Virginia near the Blue Ridge Mountains. There, the couple has family, and Jeanne and Kevin have already cleared the land where Kevin has started orchards for apples, peaches, and plums. He gives extra produce to the community and works at the saw mill he started to build his own furniture. Despite his love of surfing and all things Sandy Hook, as long as Kevin “can always see a long distance,” whether it be from beaches to bays, or valleys to mountains, Kevin will call it home. Please share in our heartfelt thanks to Kevin for his years of service, keeping visitors to Sandy Hook happy, healthy, and safe.
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