KENT VOLKMER Pinal County Attorney

Interview by Bea Lueck

Ohio native Kent Volkmer has been the Pinal County Attorney since January 2017. The Republican has pursued a system of “individualized justice” through his office over the last six years, looking at each case on its particular merits and encouraging the use of probation, diversion and specialty courts as an alternative to prison when appropriate.

Volkmer and his wife, who was his high school sweetheart, moved to Casa Grande in 2007 where he began practicing law at Cooper and Reuter LLP. He went on to form his own firm with two partners before running for office in 2016.

Grande LIVING: OK, let’s start at the beginning. Where’d you grow up, and what was your family life like?

Kent Volkmer: I grew up north central Ohio, about an hour north of Columbus and an hour south of Lake Erie, in the middle of a woods surrounded by cornfields for 5 miles in all directions. I have three younger sisters.

We came from a very sportsinvolved family, so all four of us played college sports. I played basketball, my oldest sister did too, and then my two youngest sisters played volleyball. My middle sister is about 6-foot-1, played Division One volleyball. My baby sister played Division Two volleyball, and my oldest sister played Division Three basketball.

When I went to college, I was a shooting guard. By the time I finished I put a couple pounds on and I played a forward, basically shooting guard forward. I would have to match up with people who were 6 feet 8 inches, which is interesting ‘cause I’m only about 6-foot-3. I attended what used to be known as Malone College. Now it’s Malone University, and it sits right beside the Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.

Grande LIVING: Where did you go to law school?

Kent Volkmer: I went to the University of Akron. I went to law school because quite frankly I wasn’t ready for a real job. I did well in school, loved undergrad, loved the college experience.

I technically graduated with a degree in liberal arts with a minor in chemistry. I was about a semester shy of being a triple major, double minor, but I knew I wanted to go to grad school.

My mom, who at that time worked as a cashier at the grocery store, developed a friendship with a woman who shopped there whose two sons ran a law firm in the small town that I grew up in. So I did a summer internship with them and thought, “Oh, this is kind of cool.” So I figured I’d go to law school and see where things kind of played out. And I went to the law school where my now-wife was finishing up her undergrad degree.

Grande LIVING: OK, so now you’ve graduated from law school, did you first take the bar in Ohio?

Kent Volkmer: I did not. So about the beginning of my third year, the end of my second year law school — law school’s three years long — I had a friend who got a job offer from the Stark County Prosecutor’s Office. I remember he was all excited because he got a job offer, and I was like, “How much money are you going to make, man?” And he said, “$38,500.” I went, “$38,500.” My wife, who was my high school sweetheart, by this time was a teacher in the Akron public system, was making $39,000. And I also have an MBA in finance.

Grande LIVING: The math isn’t working there.

Kent Volkmer: No, especially with an MBA in finance. So we started saying, “Hey, if we’re ever going to move anywhere, probably makes sense to do it when we’re young, no kids.”

Her best friend, her husband and I convinced my wife to move with us. So we looked at the Carolinas, but at that time, the giant hurricane had hit there. And my wife said, “No, Florida, no, Georgia," because she couldn’t deal with the humidity. So we just started eliminating. And finally it was like Southern California or Arizona. We couldn’t afford Southern California, so we're like, “Let’s try Arizona.” Her friend loved Arizona and we said, “OK, the four of us are going to start our life adventure.”

We actually went to the city of Maricopa and put deposits down on houses. And then her friend surprises us with, “I’m pregnant,” and she says, “I can’t move to Arizona with a new baby and have no family support or anything else.”

So they backed out, and my wife and I decided we didn’t want to go to Maricopa because she got hired here in Casa Grande at McCartney Ranch Elementary School. So we looked here in Casa Grande, looked into a house and purchased one up in Ghost Ranch. And that was early winter of 2007.

I applied to take the bar in Ohio, Michigan and Arizona because you must apply eight months in advance, and we really weren’t sure where we were going. I only took the one bar, obviously. I flew down in July of ‘07 and I passed the bar. I was a long- term substitute teacher at Casa Grande Middle School for the gap in between because you take the bar in July and you don’t get your results until the end of the year.

Grande LIVING: That prepared you for the county attorney’s office.

Kent Volkmer: I have no regrets doing it. I liked it. It was fun. It was interesting because I was just a kind of a long-term sub. And at the very end of that semester there was a job opening that was posted by Cooper & Rueter. And I was just kind of scrolling through Craigslist and saw it.

Grande LIVING: Oh, Craigslist, baby!

Kent Volkmer: I applied, I went and interviewed with Steve Cooper and Liz Rueter; they hired me. I think Jan. 16, 2008, is when I actually started.

After about four years, I decided I wanted to run my own law firm. I recruited two locals who were actually at the public defender’s office at that time, Josh Wallace and Cody Weagant. We opened Wallace, Volkmer & Weagant; that would’ve been in December of 2012. And we were quite successful for about four years before I ran for office.

Grande LIVING: So what was the impetus to running for county attorney?

Kent Volkmer: There were a few different things. One of the things that bothered me is I represented a grandfather, his son and his grandson all at the same time, for drug-related offenses in the criminal system. And I thought, our system isn’t working particularly well.

Then I had a case in which I got a not guilty verdict as a defense attorney, and as a defense attorney that should be the high point of your life. I remember the case quite clearly, and when I got the win, there was a part of me that said, “Good work, Kent,” and there was another part of me that said, “That’s not the right result.” And it left me feeling very awkward.

So you couple those issues with, at that time, my predecessor believed that the way to keep a community safe was to punish our way there. I didn’t believe fundamentally that was the way to keep a community safe. And I’m comparing that to the three generations of that family I’m representing, seeing that’s the mindset we’ve had for 60 years, and this is the fallout.

So I believe that there is a smarter way to do justice. Also, I’m a Republican. I am a fiscal conservative. I believe that every dollar we spend as a government entity, we should get value for.

And what I believed then, and I believe even more now, is we don’t get much value when we put people in prison.

Continued on page 30

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