Timothy Garrison’s job responsibilities are complex, but their unifying intent is simple: to protect the public. As an assistant attorney for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Missouri, he leads and coordinates the investigative efforts of federal and state agencies as well as local authorities to prosecute criminals whose offenses include interstate and international drug trafficking, firearms offenses and money laundering, to name a few. It’s a job for which the 13-year member of the U.S. Marine Corps, currently holding the rank of major in the Marine Corps Reserves, is particularly well suited.
What was your first job? My first job was as a shoe shine boy at the former Auto Magic car washes on Sunshine and Battlefield. That job taught me the basics, but the Marine Corps gave me a master’s degree in shoe shining. It’s becoming a lost art.
When did you realize you had grown up? Strapped in the loud and windy open bay of a huge blacked-out helicopter that was carefully descending, in the middle of the night, onto a tiny landing pad on top of a hydroelectric dam strewn with unlit power lines over the Euphrates river in western Iraq, seated next to a nervous Marine who was manning a .50-caliber machine gun while hanging out a door to scan the ground with night vision goggles for bad guys who would like to shoot us down. I remember thinking the next moment could be a significant one in my life.
What do you miss most about the 1990s? All the free time I had.
