At Random: Stephen Chammoun

By Jessica Pope

March 23, 2008 11:30 pm

— 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.
“I tried the traditional route first,” he recalled. “I went to both the Adel Police Department and Cook County Sheriff’s Office, only to find out they were not hiring. There were no jobs available. Because I was a small town boy, I did not look elsewhere. All I wanted was to stay close to home.”
Chammoun came to a rather simple conclusion: If he wanted to attend the Police Academy and study the ins and outs of law enforcement, he was going to have to make it happen himself. He asked Adel’s chief of police to sponsor him — he said, “They do not let just anyone in” — and both of his parents to help him pay for the training. He put his degree in criminal justice on hold and entered the Tifton-based Police Academy on the Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College campus.
While in the Police Academy, Chammoun applied for a host of law enforcement jobs throughout the South Georgia area. After graduation, he went to work for the Cook County Sheriff’s Office.
Chammoun was officially a deputy. He worked 12 hours a day and loved every minute of it. He said that he preferred days to nights because not much happened in the small area after dark. When Cook County residents went to bed, they stayed there.
“I developed a big interest in answering calls and helping people in distress,” he said. “ It was pretty much what I expected it to be, and having been a dispatcher, I knew what was going on. Oh yeh, you could definitely say I enjoyed it from day one.”
Chammoun’s very first call was to an accident on Interstate 75.
After about a year on the road, Chammoun, who had repeatedly expressed an interest in becoming a detective, was promoted to investigator. The self-described problem solver was now partnered with the Sheriff’s Office’s lone detective. He relished the more predictable hours and even managed to find time to return to his criminal justice degree on the campus of Valdosta State University.
“I was able to go to class at night,” he added. “It was slow going, but I was determined to finish.”
In 2003, having met a detective with the Valdosta Police Department and considered all that a larger department could offer him, Chammoun made the decision to leave the Cook County Sheriff’s Office. He came to Valdosta as a detective and was finally able to finish his degree in criminal justice.
“It feels so good to close a case, to make an arrest or satisfy a victim, to follow something all the way to court,” he said. “In Valdosta, compared to Cook County, that happens on a much more regular basis since we have a greater volume of work.”
“I feel fortunate to have been able to build a solid foundation in law enforcement while working with the Cook County Sheriff’s Office,” he continued. “I am still learning and hope to learn something new about his job every day.”
Chammoun is assigned to the Persons Division of the Valdosta Police Department. He investigates all of the assaults and rapes and armed robberies and murders and crimes against an individual. Officers wake him up — when he is on call — in the middle of the night and when someone has been stabbed or shot or assaulted or robbed.
“A lot of the cases stay with me at the end of the day,” he said. “I can still see their faces .... My best motivation is knowing that at the end of the day I have done everything I can to help someone. I put everything I have into every case.”
Recently, Chammoun returned to the campus of Valdosta State University to continue his study of biology. He hopes doing so will make him better at his current job and enhance his forensic skills for the future. Again, it seems as if he’s subconsciously channeling Grissom, whose philosophy about work has always and forever been: “If you want to learn about forensics, master everything else first.”
In his spare time, Chammoun volunteers with the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary. For 10 years he has helped provide vessel safety checks, harbor patrols, safe boating courses, search and rescue, as well as marine environmental protection services. He also volunteers, when he can, with the Boy Scouts of America. He earned the rank of Eagle Scout as a youth.
Because of his return to biology, Chammoun has developed a passion for entomology — also known as the scientific study of insects. (It appears he has more in common with Gil Grissom than he thought possible. Maybe this explains all the references to “CSI” when he works a crime scene.)
Chammoun is engaged to Jill Hiatt, who works for the Valdosta Police Department. He cannot wait to become a stepfather to her daughter, Emily, who is eight years old.

Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.