Female deputy not count'y first after all

Oops.

Female deputies are rare in the Roosevelt County Sheriff’s office, but Natalie Broglie will not be the first in the department’s 100-year history as the Portales News-Tribune reported on Thursday.

Bekki Hall, executive secretary for the sheriff’s office, said she had researched the issue and found no documentation supporting another female deputy when she told a PNT reporter that Broglie will be the county’s first female deputy when she completes a two-week training course.

But Hall said Thursday she received a call from Joe Blair, the county’s historian, after the story appeared in Thursday’s paper. Blair told Hall he thought there was one other female deputy.

Hall did additional research and eventually learned that Nancy Cox, who now lives in Kansas, worked for the Roosevelt County’s Sheriff’s Department in the late 1970s.

Hall said she talked with Virginia Carter, widow of former Roosevelt County Sheriff Sonny Carter, who confirmed Cox’s employment, in 1978 and 1979.

“In speaking with Sheriff Carter’s widow, she remembered her,” Hall said.

Cox’s parents — Joe and Wanda Mitchell — still live in Portales. Wanda Mitchell said Thursday that her daughter is now a special education teacher in Garden City, Kan.

The PNT will attempt to profile Cox in a future story.