SPRINGFIELD – From Lane County Sheriff to PeaceHealth’s Oregon network security manager, Cliff Harrold, “was designed to serve.”
Harrold dedicated 35 years to the LCSO, having been appointed sheriff in 2019, subsequently elected in 2020, and re-elected in 2024, until his retirement in May.
Two months after his career change, Harrold is enjoying the switch in pace and spending more free time with his family.
Harrold’s new role is to protect caregivers and patients in PeaceHealth facilities such as Riverbend, Cottage Grove, and Florence.
“I have really enjoyed my onboarding. I’m learning a lot, and it’s fun to learn new things,” Harrold said. “I’m enjoying the fact that I’ve got a new pace, new challenges, and new things to learn.”
He equated his experience starting this new path to a previous one, when he was 21 and working at the Lane County Jail. Despite living in Lane County his whole life, he didn’t see the full picture of what happens out of the spotlight.
“I wasn’t paying attention to the complexity of the whole operation, and now that I’m over here in this role, I’m realizing it’s obviously complicated to run a multiple-hospital campus,” he said.
According to Harrold, nationwide data on clinical caregivers being assaulted by patients showed that PeaceHealth numbers were high.
“PeaceHealth really made an intentional effort to impact those numbers, and that’s this program that I now get to manage,” he said. “I had no idea until I got here and then realized that there’s all these things that are going on behind-the-scenes when we show up to just seek help for ourselves.”
Even though his new job and his old one average the same 40-hour workweek, he said PeaceHealth gives him the chance to separate himself from his work a little bit more.
“I think that the thing that I can say most definitely is true, and my wife would back this up, is that I am much more mentally present at home when I am at home than I was before,” Harrold said.
It was often that he would get phone calls or text messages after hours while he was a sheriff, and although the call may have only lasted five minutes, “my wife would attest to the fact that my brain was stuck on that issue for the next hour instead of being present at home,” he said.
He said with his new role, he will still occasionally get contacted after hours, but “it’s a completely different level.”
Harrold and his wife enjoy spending more time with their kids and families. He mentioned the Fourth of July holiday as a recent favorite, saying that it was probably the first time in around two decades that he didn’t spend it in a patrol car.
“Getting to go to the Creswell parade and be a cheerleader for Sheriff (Carl) Wilkerson and his chief deputy was actually super fun,” he said. “I was a little unsure if I would sort of be mourning that I wasn’t driving around in a patrol car, but we had a really fun day.”
“My wife and I had talked a lot and prayed a lot about what it will look like some day to not be at the sheriff’s office through the years,” said Harrold. “I’m just really pleased with the timing of all of this, but I’m also enjoying continuing to be involved in supporting Sheriff Wilkerson and his team and watching individuals step up into that next level of leadership.”
