Reporter’s Note: Although it is not quite over, the month of March has been a rather interesting one for me to date. As many of you probably know, I write the vast majority of Valdosta Scene magazine each and every month. In the past couple of weeks, I spent quite a few hours with some outstanding law enforcement officers from all the Lowndes County departments — Valdosta, Remerton, Hahira, Lake Park, Moody Air Force Base, the Georgia State Patrol, Valdosta State University and the Sheriff’s Office. The magazine’s “Cops” issue is scheduled to arrive in early April and promises to make for interesting reading. Many of us at The Times are still laughing at the stories some of the officers shared.

For this At Random, I decided to simply continue with the law enforcement theme and interview one more of our outstanding local officers who was not featured inside the pages of the magazine. He is a detective with the Valdosta Police Department and was recently named Officer of the Year by the Exchange Club of Valdosta.

Valdosta Police Department Detective Stephen M. Chammoun can rarely be found sitting in front of his television set watching the latest scripted crime drama. While many Valdostans have developed an enthusiastic interest in popular shows like “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” he has not.

“I won’t say that I never watch them because I do every now and then, especially when I am flipping through channels and catch one of them on,” said the 28-year-old Hahira resident. “I laugh at them. I should probably watch them much more than I do since a lot of the people we have to deal with while investigating crimes expect us to behave like their favorite characters. It is crazy. I have had someone on more than one occasion actually come up to me and say, ‘That’s not how they do it on CSI.’ I have to admit, it can be interesting to see how someone in TV land handles a particular situation, if I have worked something similar. Sometimes I wish things were as easy for us as they appear on the shows.”

Chammoun was born at Valdosta’s South Georgia Medical Center and raised by his parents 27 miles away in Adel. When he graduated from Cook High School in 1997, he decided to pursue a bachelor’s degree in biology at Valdosta State University and follow in his paternal family’s footsteps. His dream at the time was to save lives, not solve crimes.

“My plan was to become a doctor,” he explained.

Chammoun worked a number of part-time jobs as a freshman at Valdosta State University, helping to fund his higher education, as well as his personal, pursuits. (He said his parents taught him the value of hard work at a rather young age.) When he was a sophomore, he accepted a position with the Cook County Sheriff’s Office, working as dispatcher and jailer on the 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift. A friend of his talked him into giving the job a try.

“He kept telling me how much fun I would have,” he said.

Traveling from Adel, Chammoun attended classes on the campus of Valdosta State University during the day. He returned to Adel each afternoon for an eight-hour shift at the Cook County Sheriff’s Office. He completed his homework and studied when things were slow on the job, as he said they often were at that point in time.

“I loved that job,” he shared. “I liked being in the know and getting the necessary information to the officers who were patrolling the roads. They relied on us to help them get the job done. I can tell you that dispatchers do a lot and deserve our respect.”

Unable to recall an exact date without looking at his academic file, Chammoun eventually changed his major from biology to criminal justice. He was hooked on the law enforcement lifestyle. Like Gil Grissom from “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” he could no more work in another profession — even medicine — than a fish could stop swimming.

“I thought it would be fun and exciting,” he said, “and still allow me to help people. My mother and father were both very supportive.”

Even though they initially hoped their son might follow in the footsteps of his paternal elders with a career in medicine, Chammoun noted that both of his parents were very supportive of his decision to pursue his own dream. He continued attending his criminal justice classes at Valdosta State University and working at the Cook County Sheriff’s Office — until an urge to attend the Police Academy got the best of him.

Chammoun wanted to be a police officer.