Dewey Smith Retires from Sheriff's Office

Captain Dewey Smith with the Pickens County Sheriff's Office has retired after 41 years in law enforcement.

Smith was one of several retiring Pickens County Sheriff's Office employees honored at a special luncheon last month.

“I'm going home to be with four great grandchildren,” Smith said.

“Dewey Smith … has served well,” said Sheriff C. David Stone at the luncheon. “Sometimes he gets a little loud.”

Stone said Smith usually gets his man.

“He would say, 'I'm going to go get this person,'” Stone said. “Normally he'd come back with that person, he'd come back with what we call the meat, a person that was trying to hide.”

Smith came to the sheriff's office after working with the Easley Police Department.

Stone presented Smith with a plaque commemorating his career with the Pickens County Sheriff's Office.

The plaque reads: “In appreciation for your dedication and loyal service to the Pickens County Sheriff's Office and the citizens of Pickens County, Nov. 1, 1977 – December 31, 2012.”

“It's been a pleasure working with him,” Stone said. “Good things come to an end. He'd work hard, but then he'd take it easy for awhile. But when it came to a time when something had to get done right quick, he was right there.”

After thanking his colleagues, Smith was moved to confess to a prank he played on the sheriff some years before.

“April Fools Day, I come up with this slick joke I was going to pull on the sheriff,” Smith recalled. He went to Vickie Smith and got a spare key to Sheriff Stone's patrol car.

“All day long that day I followed him everywhere he went, to every meeting, and I turned his car around and moved it to another parking place,” Smith said, to huge laughs from his coworkers.

“He comes in and walks right up to Vickie,” Smith recalled. “He told her, 'You're in on this, you know who did it, and if I ever find out who done it, I'm going to fire them.”

“You're fired,” Stone said, drawing big laughs from the crowd.

“I never ratted you out,” Vickie Smith said.
“I never ratted you out,” Dewey replied.

Smith said Stone has put “a lot of good law enforcement” out on the street protecting the county.

“Every person in this room that's every worked for the sheriff's office, all here present or gone, for 44 years, you worked there because he signed your name,” Smith said.

Assistant Sheriff Tim Morgan said the CID division wouldn't be the same without Smith's “resounding echo of 'Every man for himself.'”

“It's been a good run,” Morgan said, of his time working together with Capt. Dewey Smith. “I've enjoyed it.”