By Jerry Hostetler
The Shipshewana and Topeka Town Marshals, Tom Fitch and Carl Stoltz
respectively, both came by their jobs as law enforcement officers in a roundabout way.
Fitch started out following in his
father’s footsteps and began studying
education in his first year at Vincennes
University back in 1990. Stoltz, on the
other hand, started out his career as an
advanced emergency medical technician with the LaGrange County EMS in
the late 1970’s.
Fitch’s interest in law enforcement
was sparked in college. His roommate
would return from his law enforcement
classes excited about videos that he
had seen in class as well the interesting
“real” police officers who brought their
real-life experiences to the classroom.
In fact, he said, “I never had a boring
night because of listening to all my
roommate’s stories from his classes.
I studied Elementary Education and I
felt like they taught it like I was still in
elementary school. I really struggled
with it being dry and uninteresting.
So, after a year studying education,
I said, you know, I’m going to switch
majors, and once I switched majors it
was interesting, I really enjoyed it, and
it took off from there.” Fitch eventually transferred to Indiana State where
he attended on a track scholarship and
he double-majored in Criminology and
Psychology.
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