HORRY COUNTY, S.C. (WBTW) — It’s time for this week’s First Responder Friday. This week we are highlighting Detective Kathy Thompson with the Horry County Police Department.
“I like being able to help people and follow the paper trail,” Thompson said.
For 40 years, she has served her community. Nineteen with the city of Conway and then 21 and counting with the Horry County Police Department. Thompson continues to make her mark on the Grand Strand.
“I do white-collar crime for the whole county, that means forgery and fraud throughout the whole county,” she said. “So a lot of mine is paperwork, hunting things on the internet, things like that.”
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Thompson started her career with HCPD in the patrol division. She then moved on to the warrant division, and from there, the training division.
“From there I moved out to patrol in the west precinct, and I was actually on patrol in the west precinct in 2011 whenever I retired,” Thompson said. “And 16 days later I came back to work.”
Although Thompson enjoys what she does, it still comes with challenges. The hardest part, she said, is telling a victim that she can’t help them. But the best part is when she can help.
“I can help someone and sort of bring closure to something bad that’s happened to them via an arrest or restitution or something like that,” she said.
Aside from Thompson’s dedication to her work, she’s highly involved in the community. She works closely with the Conway Recreation Department as an umpire and coach.
“I love seeing the kids when you’re introducing something new to them and then they finally catch it and it’s like amazing just to watch them and how they light up about, ‘Oh, I did it, I did it,'” she said.
And a positive environment outside of work isn’t much different from the one she has on the job.
“It’s a great bunch of people,” Thompson said. “We all have our days and if you’re having a bad day and you just need to vent, there’s always somebody there to listen, that way you don’t have to take it home.”