The encounter turned out all right: Hoover married the girl, and she’s still his wife.

Last week, as Logan Township police chief, Hoover, 60, arrested himself on a metaphorical one-way street by retiring after three and a half decades in law enforcement, putting an end to the long hours, weekends and holidays on duty and children’s birthdays and school events missed — trials that wife Karolyn endured patiently enough to merit the term “hero,” often applied to police officers like himself, according to Hoover.

“She put up with it for 33 years,” Hoover said, growing emotional talking about her and their four daughters, following a meeting at which the township supervisors approved a retirement proclamation, praised Hoover’s two-year tenure as chief, shook his hand and had their pictures taken with him. “She was the heart of my family,” he said.

Wives of officers don’t get enough credit, Hoover said.

Retiring Logan Township Police Chief David Hoover (right) talks with former Logan Township Police Chief Ron Heller during a gathering honoring Hoover at the township building on Friday, his last day on the job. Mirror photo by Patrick Waksmunski

“She’s the one that held the family together, while I was doing this job,” Hoover said. “We were out taking care of people we don’t know; she was taking the kids to school, putting meals on the table.”

Hoover, 60, decided he wanted to become a policeman while still a student at Penn State Altoona.

“I liked working with people. … Helping them,” he said.

He got a taste of it there, serving as an auxiliary officer for the campus police department, unlocking doors, writing parking tickets, he said.

His first real police job was in Martinsburg as a part-timer, after which he added part-time jobs in North Woodbury Township just outside Martinsburg, then Roaring Spring — working all three at once.

“I had a young family, I was married, trying to make ends meet,” he said.

The uniforms were similar, and sometimes he would merely change his shirt moving from one job to the other.

“Sometimes I had the wrong pants,” he said.

He started at Logan Township in 1992, became a sergeant in 2004 and a detective sergeant the same year, then chief in early 2023.

He operated with “a steady hand through many changes,” according to the proclamation.

He enjoyed working on crime scenes as a detective, Hoover said.

He especially liked dealing with fingerprints.

“There’s something neat about lifting (one),” from a crime scene, he said.

He liked “the unique feeling” of being the first to know when a culprit had been identified: “to know that’s the guy,” he said.

He went to school to qualify himself for reading prints.

He would take one lifted from a crime scene, then try to match it with one “rolled” from a suspect.

He never identified a murder suspect like that, but he did identify suspects for burglaries and auto break-ins.

About 20 years ago, there was a rash of such break-ins at the Logan Valley Mall, and he lifted a print from the side window of a car.

They had a suspect in custody, and he used a portable kit to get the suspect’s print.

It was a match.

When confronted, the suspect confessed.

Matches were sent to the state police for confirmation.

The process is more automated now, with a picture of prints sent to the state for matching by computer.

He liked the detective work, but he didn’t like the long hours and the missed family events.

“That was the hard part,” he said.

As chief, he liked helping to get the equipment his officers needed.

He was pleased to obtain cameras for them and for the township building, to get the starting wage boosted and to get the rules changed, so officers with tattoos could wear short sleeves on hot days and feel less uncomfortable and sweaty in their bulletproof vests; and so officers who lived in surrounding counties wouldn’t need to sell their houses and move to Blair to join the force, he said.

But he wasn’t a fan of the disciplinary responsibilities.

“I don’t like to cause problems for anybody,” he said. “(Although) sometimes you have to make the tough calls.”

It was especially difficult when discipline involved officers with whom he’d developed relationships over the years, he said.

He decided to retire now because he and his wife remain healthy enough to enjoy the time they have left and to do some of the things they’ve put off doing, he said.

That includes hiking and camping and “family time together,” he said.

He has hobbies that include working on antique cars and woodworking.

“(And) I have so much stuff to do around the house it’s pathetic,” he said.

He may look at some other work options, although he has “no idea” what those may be, he said.

He was born in Nason Hospital in Roaring Spring and grew up in North Woodbury Township in a suburban-style house, just outside Martinsburg Borough.

His father owned Hoover’s Ford, which sold tractors.

He worked for his father for a while, then got a job with Welded Construction, a pipeline installation company.

His role for the firm was to work out arrangements and settle claims with landowners prior to construction.

The issues included how much compensation was right for crops that would be disturbed by the work, he said.

“I kept the peace between the construction company and the citizens,” he said.

It was a kind of prelude to the work he’d do later as a police officer, he agreed.

Over the last decade and a half, policing has become less attractive as a career, based on currents of thought on a national scale, he said.

“When I started, I thought it was an honorable profession,” he said.

Then, testing events were mobbed.

Now, virtually all police departments struggle to hire, and 10 or 15 candidates is considered a success.

Asked about the process the supervisors plan to use to obtain a replacement for Hoover, Supervisors Chairman Jim Patterson said, “We’ll be evaluating the department’s policies and practices: we want to look at the overall picture.”

There is no formal method prescribed by the law for the situation, said solicitor Dan Stants. “However the board decides,” Stants said.

With Hoover’s retirement, Sgt. Barry Fry becomes senior officer, officials said.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.