Dan Mattos: A cowboy turned cop

COEUR d'ALENE - Growing up in California, there were only two things Undersheriff Dan Mattos said he wanted to be.

A cowboy or a cop.

When he was 17, Mattos walked into the offices of The Great Plains Western Cattle Company and said he wanted to go work at one of the company's ranches.

"They had a ranch in Louisiana and a ranch in Montana and I figured it was a sure thing that I would be going to Montana," Mattos said. "I came back (to the office) in a week and he told me I was hired and they were going to send me to Louisiana. Nothing against Louisiana, but Gary Cooper wasn't from Louisiana. So I wasn't going to do it."

In Arizona at the time, Mattos said they hired officers at the age of 19. He had traveled through the state and said he enjoyed the country.

"I applied there in 1978 and in June I was hired," Mattos said. "I've been nothing but a policeman ever since. No break, straight policeman. If I make it to June of 2018, I've got 40 years."

Mattos and his wife, Linda always wanted to move north to "the greener country." He got the opportunity to do so in 1992, when he accepted a position in Sandpoint as a police officer.

In 1995, Mattos began working with the Kootenai County Sheriff's Office.

You were just recently named undersheriff, congratulations, and this may seem like a dumb question but what exactly does an undersheriff do?

They're basically the person who really runs the functional operations. Ben (Wolfinger) is a really hands-on guy, so it's probably less so with Ben than it is with other sheriffs. But the sheriff tends to be the political figurehead, make no mistake about it they are the head guy but the undersheriff runs the day-to-day operations.

Their job is to make sure the budget and the functional aspects of the office are taken care of.

Does that create any unique challenges for you, dealing with that day-to-day stuff?

Police work in its own right has its own unique set of challenges. As far as the day-to-day goes, you're spending a lot of time making sure that things are going smoothly, that goes without saying.

But you have a lot of policemen, policeman don't become policemen because they have Type B personalities - they become policemen because they have Type A personalities - so you're managing a lot of strong personalities and trying to make sure everybody gets to where you want to go together.

What's your style when dealing with those strong personalities?

I believe in leaving people alone to do their jobs. Unless somebody gives me a reason to have to look over their shoulder all the time, they got to where they are at because they earned it, they tested for it, and they got to where they're at because of their efforts.

I've got plenty to do in my own right without watching them and we have an incredibly good staff of highly experienced cops.

Do you have any goals for yourself and for the department as undersheriff?

I've got lots of them, some are realistic and some aren't.

One of the things that is really important to me and probably at the tip top of my list is that the relationships we have with our partners in the community remain at their absolute best.

My concern is that we continue to network with all of the other agencies and keep a good healthy relationship with them and keep moving in a positive direction.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about law enforcement?

That we're all rigid because we're not. We're not a bunch of robots that are programmed to go out and do everything the exact same way.

We're not all the same, some guys have got a great sense of humor and some guys have less of a sense of humor. Some guys think that the traffic aspect of things is the most important and other guys think that catching burglars in the middle of the night are. It takes a lot of different personalities to make it work.

So then it's just a meshing of these individuals?

Exactly, and the more you can mesh those individuals, in my opinion, the better agency you've got.

There's going to be some diversity and we like that.

Going back to your career, obviously you've dealt with some of the grisly stuff, but have there been any particularly satisfying moments that you can recall?

There's been many, many, many of them and for different reasons. Sometimes it was catching a bad guy and sometimes it was for helping somebody that really needs it.

I remember many years ago there were these people, I think they were from Denmark or Holland, that had their hotel room ripped off. They didn't have anything and were stranded so I gave them some money to help them. They wrote me a nice letter thanking me and actually sent the money back. I never expected it, but that probably made me feel better about myself, rather than just as a policeman, just to be a person helping someone else.

As far as the harder days go, is it tough to not let that bleed into your personal life when you get home? How do you handle that?

For me personally it's my horses. You've got to have some sort of outlet outside. In police work you do see things from time to time that most people never see in a lifetime and then you see those things many times. After a while you kind of get numb to it and that's bad. It's bad because of what it does to you in the long run. In the short term it protects you, but in the long run if you're not careful you can really start losing a part of yourself.

So those outlets are what keep you from getting numb?

Where people run into problems with this profession is you see guys go through this business for 30 or 40 years and everyone they know is in this business. They retire, there is a place when it's time to move on, and they don't know what to do with themselves because they never developed those outlets.

How many horses do you guys have and what are their names?

We have four: Kirby, Ranger, Haas, and the last one I did not name is Herkimer. My wife gave it that name and it ended up being my horse and so now when someone asks what my horse's name is I just say "oh jeez" because you have to explain it to people.

What's your favorite part about being in the backcountry riding horses?

Being away. It's something to me that is mindless and I can go out, I'm probably out more by myself than with my wife, I can just think and do what I want. There's not any pressure unless the horse is being a nut head.

One more question, who is your favorite cowboy and why?

I'm not going to say John Wayne because he really isn't a cowboy. I'd have to say Gary Cooper because he was a soft-spoken, quiet guy that was unassuming. Humility is a big deal. Plus he was a real cowboy too, he wasn't just a movie-star cowboy.