Capt. Cindy Caldwell’s rise in Campbell County has broken glass ceiling

A defining moment in Capt. Cindy Caldwell’s career happened on the railing of a highway bridge.

The Campbell County deputy was called to the U.S. 460 bridge over U.S. 29 to talk a man out of taking his own life. He had been drinking, and as she talked to him, she worried he might slip and fall to the highway below.

“He was in a bad way,” she said.

He told Caldwell that she didn’t understand what had happened in his life to bring him to the bridge.

But she did understand. She had gone through something similar. And while she obviously had dealt with the problem in a different way, her story was enough to bring the man off the bridge and into the back of a patrol car.

As she walked to her car, another deputy flagged her down. The man had one more thing to say.

“He had tears in his eyes and he thanked me for telling him my story,” Caldwell said.

That moment has stayed with the 22-year veteran.

She was recently promoted to captain — the first woman to hold that rank at the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office and one of just a few in the Lynchburg area. She’s one of only three female deputies currently at the sheriff’s office.

“She’s earned it,” said Sheriff Terry Gaddy. “I’ve watched her grow through the ranks. I am proud to promote her … She’s matured as an officer every year.”

Law enforcement sort of runs in Caldwell’s family, she said. Her mother was a justice of the peace — now known as a magistrate. She kept her typewriter in the living room and officers would come into the house regularly to swear out warrants.

Her father ran the prison camp. Both brothers worked in law enforcement as well, so it seemed natural for her to follow suit. Her son, Chris Brown, also became a deputy. He works for the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office.

“When I told my dad what I was going to study, he said, ‘If you go to secretary school, I’ll pay your way,’” she said. “Even my dad didn’t want me to go into this profession.”

It didn’t take long for his pride in his daughter to win out, she said.

She started her career in 1979 at the Henry County Sheriff’s Office. She was 19 and at the time, the sheriff’s office required its deputies to provide their own gun and ammunition. Caldwell was too young to buy it herself, so her parents bought her first sidearm.

That is where she met her first husband. When he got a job at the Lynchburg Police Department, she began looking for work in the Lynchburg area.

A sheriff at one of the agencies where she interviewed told her that as long as he held the office, there would never be a female road deputy.

She began working for the Department of Corrections. She got hired on at the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office in 1986 after then-Sheriff Robert Maxey had made a promise to hire women during his campaign. Caldwell was the second woman to be hired to the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office.

“He knew there was a place for females in law enforcement,” she said. “We had proven ourselves that we can do the job. We may not do it in the same way, but we can do it.”

Caldwell said she’s found in some situations, introducing a male deputy rather than a female one can make a suspect more confrontational. She’s been on calls where the suspect curses at a male deputy then immediately turns around and apologizes to her for cursing in front of her.

Some of Caldwell’s favorite times as a deputy involved the years she spent as a DARE officer with Campbell County Schools.

She said Gaddy teases her because she still gets stopped by former DARE students who remember her even though she stopped teaching DARE in 1997.

Her first husband died in 1996. She remarried in 2001.

It took 12 years to get promoted to sergeant, six years to make the rank of lieutenant, and just more than four to make captain.

“When I started here, I was everyone’s sister,” Caldwell said. “Now I’m everyone’s mother. But I hope I am not here to be everyone’s grandmother. … It’s a family here. If something happens to one of us, it happens to all of us. We grieve together, we laugh together, we play together and we work together.”

Caldwell said she wishes more women would apply for law enforcement jobs. It’s difficult, she said, to find qualified applicants regardless of gender.

Even fewer women make it to ranking positions. Caldwell thinks that is because of the small number of women in the field and also because women tend to leave the profession when they start having children.

Her new position as captain includes handling evidence, the vehicle fleet, training, courthouse security, school resource and DARE officers, crime prevention and other things.

“She is the perfect fit for captain; she has the drive, the experience and the knowledge,” said Major Steve Hutcherson. “If she’s made any slip up, I don’t know about them. The department is where it is because of the people we have.”