By Miles Layton

SWAN QUARTER — Sheriff Carl “Guire” Cahoon Jr., a lifelong Hyde County resident who traded a farm tractor for a sheriff’s badge in his fifties, is seeking a fourth term in the November 3 general election.

Cahoon, a Democrat known around the county simply as “Guire,” has spent more than a decade leading the Hyde County Sheriff’s Office, but law enforcement was never his first calling. For most of his life, he was a farmer, working alongside two brothers on 1,500 acres of row crops — cotton, corn, soybeans and string beans — in the county he’s called home his entire life.

Voters in Hyde County will decide November 3 whether Cahoon earns four more years to continue that work, as he faces Unaffiliated challenger Odell Williams in the general election.

The shift from farmer to lawman didn’t come until Cahoon was 51 years old, an age that surprised even the reporter interviewing him. Most people entering law enforcement do so in their twenties, not in the second half of a career already spent behind a plow. But Cahoon said age was never the obstacle people might assume.

Cahoon wasn’t the only one bucking the trend. Sitting in a classroom full of recruits fresh out of high school, he found he had company his own age.

“I was up against twenty, twenty-one, twenty-three-year-old boys, you know, young men, when I was in the academy. There was three of us that were in our fifties when I was in the academy,” he said.

The decision to leave farming behind wasn’t made lightly, and it wasn’t made because Cahoon had grown tired of the land. It came down to economics and timing.

“Farming wasn’t good at that time, and somebody had to make a move, and I made the move,” Cahoon said.

Cahoon began working under then-Sheriff David Mason, rising to chief deputy before being elected sheriff himself in 2014. Now 71 years old, Cahoon oversees a department of 14 deputies, with one position currently open.

For Cahoon, running for sheriff wasn’t a departure from family tradition — it was something of a homecoming. His grandfather, Charlie Cahoon, served as Hyde County’s sheriff for three decades, from the mid-1950s until his retirement in the 1980s.

“Yes, my grandfather was sheriff,” Cahoon said. “He was sheriff for 32 years.”

The Cahoon name runs deep through Hyde County, and Guire Cahoon’s roots there go back generations. Born and raised in the county, he graduated high school in 1973 and has watched friends and neighbors come and go over the decades.

“If they don’t stay here in the beginning, they’ll either come back,” Cahoon said. “That says a lot about community life here in Hyde County.”

That sense of community is central to how Cahoon describes his job. Hyde County is rural and sparsely populated, and Cahoon said that smallness is part of what makes the work meaningful to him.

“Being in a small rural county is a blessing to me because I know most of the people that live here, and I consider them neighbors,” Cahoon said. “And I work with them every day.”

Asked what he loves most about wearing a badge, Cahoon didn’t hesitate.

“That I am able to help somebody through some bad times that they’ve gotten themselves into,” he said.

He acknowledged that not every situation calls for handcuffs, and part of the job is knowing the difference — and having the relationships to act on it.

“We can talk to the judge and the DA and help them out. Everybody don’t need to be in jail, but some people do,” Cahoon said. “As a sheriff, you got the opportunity to help somebody out if that arises.”

If reelected, Cahoon said his priorities are less about reinventing the department and more about continuing to build on what’s already working. Chief among those priorities is keeping his deputies equipped with modern tools and reliable vehicles, something he credits the county commissioners for supporting.

“I just continue to serve the people of Hyde County to the best of my ability,” Cahoon said. “I know I can’t make everybody happy, but I can serve the people. And since I’ve been in office, the equipment that I have to offer my deputies has really gone up.”

That includes technology the department didn’t have before, such as a pair of drones now in regular use. “We got two drones, and try to keep them in the best automobiles that I can,” Cahoon said. “The county commissioners have really been good to me and my staff.”

One of the steepest challenges facing the department has nothing to do with equipment or technology — it’s competing with better-funded neighboring counties for deputies. Hyde County, with its smaller tax base, can’t match salaries offered in places like Dare County or Beaufort County.

“We can’t compete with Dare County, and Beaufort County’s a lot higher than we are,” Cahoon said. “But the smaller surrounding counties, we compete with them.”

Even as he pushes for better tools, Cahoon is candid about their limits in a place like Hyde County. “Sometimes technology you can’t rely on because of outages or cell phones don’t work all the time,” he said. “Radios don’t work in certain areas.”

Outside the sheriff’s office, Cahoon’s life remains firmly planted in Hyde County soil — literally. He lives in Swan Quarter with his wife, Pamela, a Fairfield native; the two will celebrate 52 years of marriage this October. The couple has two children, six grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

“I spoil them as much as I can,” Cahoon said.

Family ties run through much of the county’s civic life. Cahoon’s daughter, Brandy Cahoon Pugh, serves as clerk of court, and his son is a state highway patrolman planning to retire within the next year. Most of his grandchildren still live nearby, including a granddaughter who works for the county’s water department and a grandson who has taken over the family farm.

“He farms. He’s taking over the farm,” Cahoon said of his oldest grandson.

Despite handing the operation off, Cahoon admits farming never quite lets go of a person, even decades after trading the fields for a badge. “I still got dirt underneath my fingernails,” he said.

When he isn’t on duty, Cahoon spends much of his free time bow hunting, a pastime he calls his passion.

Asked what message he wants to send to voters ahead of the November election, Cahoon kept it simple and personal.

“I appreciate their support in the past, and ask for their support for the upcoming election,” Cahoon said. “I love this county. I love the people in this county.”

He credits the slower pace of life and close-knit relationships for making Hyde County a place people choose to stay — or return to. “It’s quiet and laid back, and most people we know that live here,” Cahoon said. “We’ve got a lot of friends that live here, grew up, went to high school here, graduated.”

For Cahoon, that continuity — of family, of place, of service — is at the heart of his case for another term. A grandson farming the family land. A daughter working in the courthouse. A department he’s spent more than a decade building. And a badge that, in some sense, has been in the family since his grandfather first pinned one on more than 70 years ago.