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“At the end of my career now, I’ve been lucky to have seen almost every aspect of the criminal justice system.”
Mike Wells worked as a New York state trooper, crime scene investigator, on the National Joint Terrorism Task Force and in the FBI’s counterterrorism division.
of mind, looked at the license plate, remembered little details about the car and the abductor,” he said, clearly awed. “He was convicted and, this kid, this could have ruined her life, but she went on to become a prosecutor.”
But the defining moment of his career is centered on a 12-year-old girl.
Wells always knew he wanted to work in law enforcement, but after high school wasn’t quite ready to dive into college. Instead, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. “I did my time, grew up and buckled down,” he said.
“That’s one case I feel I had a part in a positive outcome,” said Wells, a 1986 graduate of SUNY Adirondack’s Criminal Justice program, describing an abduction in the early 1990s. “It was literally a stranger danger: A little girl, 12 years old, was riding her bike in Chestertown and a complete stranger who was a registered sex offender was driving by, grabbed her and, 20 hours later, she came walking out of the woods.” Wells was called in within a few hours of the child being taken. “I worked the whole thing, through the trial,” he said. “She was the strongest kid you’d ever want to meet. She had a presence
He enrolled at SUNY Adirondack and, while a student, worked part time for Lake George police. “I was applying concepts learned in the classroom to the real world,” Wells said. The college provided Wells a foundation in penal law and criminal procedural law. “The instructors were top-notch,” he said. SUNY Adirondack prepared him for his career and it’s also where he met his wife. Right after he started working in Lake George, he bumped into
an acquaintance in a campus hallway. “She had gotten a ticket and wanted to know what to do,” he remembered. “I had just started and didn’t know anything, but Lisa (now his wife of three decades) was there and she introduced me to her.” The mutual friend arranged for the couple to attend a comedy show that night. “We met up there and it was love at first sight and we’ve been together ever since,” he said. “She’s been with a cop the whole time and I think that’s huge because anything I’ve done, she’s had to deal with: If I was gone for six months at a time; had late-night callouts; missed family things, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day … it’s not just me doing the job, it’s my wife.”
Among the many things Wells did in his career was becoming a state trooper, first stationed in Massena while Lisa was attending college in Potsdam. “With the St. Regis Indian Reservation, there was a lot of conflict