David Miller 0:32

Today's guest is Mike Tupper. He's a former Marshalltown, Iowa chief of police. He retired in 2025 after 32 years in law enforcement. More than 13 of those was served in Marshalltown. Mike worked his way up from patrol officer to detective to sergeant, in Ottumwa before becoming chief of police in Nevada and eventually to Marshalltown, Iowa. I think what I really like and what defines his leadership is his commitment to his community. Colleagues describe him as steady, compassionate, and all in in taking care of people, qualities that were put to the ultimate test when the tornado hit Marshalltown. So with that, Mike, welcome to the show.

Mike Tupper 1:15

Well, thank you for, including me. I don't know. I, I think there's probably a lot better people than me to talk to. but, I'm happy to, be able to share our story, so thank you for including me!

David Miller 1:26

Can you give me a little history on your career path to becoming, Marshalltown's chief of police?

Mike Tupper 1:33

Yeah. I, I'm at a, an Iowa kid. I was actually born in Texas, but I lived most of my life in Iowa. My, my family moved to Dubuque, Iowa, when I was about five years old, so I grew up in Iowa. after, you know, I went to college, I thought I was, uh, to play football. I thought I was gonna play wide receiver for the Green Bay Packers. That didn't work out for me. But, I went to college, studied, sociology, criminal justice. when I, uh, was, done playing football, realized I had to figure out what I was gonna do with my life, and, law enforcement sounded kinda like a cool gig. get to drive fast cars fast and, and, I didn't want an office job, which is what I ended up with kind of. but, I started my law enforcement career in Ottumwa, which is in southeast Iowa, pretty cl- and Ottumwa's a pretty similar community to Marshalltown. I worked down there for about 11 and a half years, and then, got, silly idea that being a police chief sounded like a fun idea. and, and generally it was, but, it had its days. But my first chief's job, was in Nevada, which is right outside of Ames. small rural, rural community, about 7,000 people. I was there for about seven and a half years, and then in, October of 2004, I took the police chief's job, in, in Marshalltown. and I, I, I was in that job... Or I- I'm sorry, it was October of 2011. I took the police chief's job in Marshalltown, and, I was in that job for the last 13 and a half years of my career. I retired, January 2025.

David Miller 3:01

Just kinda knowing of you and history a little bit, but just read up a little bit as well, your style of leadership approach is maybe a little different than some of the other chief of polices, or, or police chief, excuse me. what is your kinda style of leadership? How many people did you oversee and how has that developed before, incident happened?

Mike Tupper 3:20

Yeah, Marshalltown by, uh, Iowa standards is, a large police department. We have, 42 police officers when we are fully staffed. usually most police departments aren't fully staffed, so we were usually working around, somewhere between 30 and 40 police officers. And then we had, the, you know, at, at one point we were in charge of the 911 center, so we had about 15 civilians then. And then the, the 911 center kind of became its own entity. when the tornado happened, though, they were still under the umbrella of the, of the police department. But, when I retired, we had, about 47 employees. 42 of those would've been police officers. I like to be engaged in the community. That, that's always been, that was always my goal. I don't know if I have a style. I don't know that I try to, be like anybody else. I just try to do what was best for, the community I was working in, and every community kind of needs something different. but in Marshalltown, what, what seemed to work is being, very visible in the community and engaged with the community. And so just being out front and engaged, was very important while I, while I was the police chief here.

David Miller 4:23

One cool thing I, I saw in my research was your Coffee With a Cop. I think that was really, really an interesting idea. What, what kind of precluded to that and, and what results came from it?

Mike Tupper 4:34

Yeah, we actually stole that idea. Coffee With a Cop is a program that started out in California, and, we were one of the first agencies in Iowa to, borrow that idea and implement it here. but we were always looking for things like that. We held, you know, we would hold town hall meetings. we had very successful Citizens Police Academy, very popular academy that, was started many years ago before my tenure. we did food drives. we had, you know, a program where we, we built a, a, a school liaison program. I would've loved to have had more school resource officers, but we didn't have that 'cause we didn't have the funding for that. So we, uh, uh, figured out a way to assign officers to the, uh, all the school buildings and just... It's all about building relationships. So you talk about building trust, you know. So even in a typical Iowa community that is not diverse, it's important to build trust, and your relationship with the community is very fragile, and it's something that you o- you have to carefully nurture. Now, if when you work in a, um, diverse community where you have cultures from all over the world coming in, and, and many of the cultures really do not trust government and they do not trust, um, law enforcement. Um, so where they come from, you can't work with law enforcement. You can't, um, you can't, uh, count on them. So you really have to work hard. You have to double your efforts to build relationships. Um, something else we did, that I'm very proud of is we, implemented a program called the Marshalltown Police and Community Team, and this was-- this would've, been implemented after the tornado. But we, embedded social workers into our police department. And so, we would have social workers responding with police officers to handle, crisis calls and to handle... you know, people would be surprised, law enforcement, it's called law enforcement, but the vast majority of the work that we do is social work, and it has nothing to do with law enforcement. And so, trying to make sure that we're delivering the right services in the community so that we can keep our community safe, prevent problems, and, give people the, type of help that they need. oftentimes law enforcement is well-trained in Iowa, and they do their best. but we sh- show up to problems requiring social service needs with law enforcement solutions, and, it doesn't always mesh. So, you know, making sure that you, you are partnering with, people in the community that can help deliver the right services really goes a long ways in, in, keeping your community safe.

James Hoelscher 7:01

Mike, I really appreciate you're setting the stage as to the community and your team there at the department. Do you wanna walk us into, walk us into the, the storm a little bit?

Mike Tupper 7:13

Yeah, so I was sitting in a local coffee shop and, my f- my phone, y- you know, the warnings we receive over our phones. Everybody in the coffee shop got a warning, right? And, everybody's phone was just going off. And I look out the window and it was bright sunshine. It... It didn't look like there was a storm anywhere near where we were at. it just seemed like a beautiful Iowa day. And, I was just wrapping up, a meeting that I was having with, some community members and I walked outside, 'cause at the time the police department w- was downtown, and so I was a block and a half from, from my office. And so I walked outside to walk back to, my office and, didn't seem like there was anything happening weather-wise. went back to my office, was monitoring the police radio, for, oh gosh, probably f- 30 to 45 minutes. And, you know, I could hear, our, our dispatchers talking about the, the weather that was heading, towards Marshalltown. And, so I was... that's kind of how I learned about the, the, the weather that was heading our way is just w- listening to the police traffic about it. you know, I know growing up in Iowa, we get used to those, storm warnings, and most of the time nothing happens. when what do we all do? We go outside and look, right? We don't... You know, you're supposed to take shelter, we don't always do that.

David Miller 8:38

That was my question was, was the key, the key indicator everyone was out on their front step looking up in the sky or

Mike Tupper 8:44

Yeah. Yeah, probably should have been. But, but I was, I was sitting in my office and, and we were in a old building at the time. In fact, our, our new police fire building was under construction at the time, and so we didn't really have any windows or anything. so I was sitting in my office just monitoring the police radio, and, it became evident that the storm was heading towards Marshalltown because there were spotters west of town, and they were calling it out. And, as I listened to that traffic, it became more and more clear that the storm was headed our way. But again, you don't really expect it to come, come to you 'cause it never really does, right? In a community our size, it's fairly rare that you hear about a tornado coming right through the middle of your town. so, it, it, it, it, it, it became clear that, we were we had a problem, and I wanted to be prepared, to respond, as the weather got closer. So I left my office, grabbed my police radio, went outside, and, it was, it was kinda cloudy, but didn't look too horrible to the west. wasn't windy or anything like that. It wasn't raining or anything like that. I walked out the front door of our police department, walked about, gosh, a quarter block. our, We had a outdoor parking lot at the time. Walked about a quarter block towards an intersection so I could cross the street to get to my car. I looked to the west, and it's starting to get a little bit dark. it's, it's slightly windy. Not a huge thing though, but I can hear the spotters calling the storm, and it, and it, it looks like it's gonna head right into town. I walked probably another 25, 30 yards to my car, got into my vehicle, and started to back up, and the storm was on top of me. It happened that

David Miller 10:31

That fast. So what,

Mike Tupper 10:32

it was unbelievable.

David Miller 10:34

can you go back up just a little bit and maybe give people an idea of what, I guess how the system works for EMS and maybe who's out, who, who's the spotters, you know, a quick, quick training idea, what, what they have to do to do it, and, and then, kinda how they relay that to you as the chief of police?

Mike Tupper 10:52

Yeah, so where I work, there's a lot of trained, voluntary spotters, but, generally how it works, especially that, the time of day that, we're talking about, it's law enforcement or it's, volunteer firefighters that are out doing the storm spotting. And so there were, there were deputies west of town that were calling in the storm, and then some of our police, police officers went to the west edges of our community and, and continued to monitor that storm, and that's kinda how we tracked it

David Miller 11:18

To see it coming into town, essentially you're getting reports on the radio as it's, as it's moving towards you and then obviously through you and, and now on top of you. So

Mike Tupper 11:26

Yeah

David Miller 11:27

how did that go?

Mike Tupper 11:29

It didn't go well. It was, it was, I've been through a lot of scary things. I've had guns pointed at me. I was in a situation where a gun was fired in my direction, and, I was not shot. I was a lot skinnier then. He must have missed. But, I've been through a lot s- I've been through some s- scary stuff, and this is the scariest thing that's ever happened to me. but that storm was, was on top of, of me very quickly, and I was in the worst place you could be, right? I was in, in my, in my vehicle. and I had a s- a sunroof in the vehicle. It was an old Ford Explorer. And, I looked up, I started to back up, and... 'Cause I wanted to get somewhere where I, where I would be able to respond to wherever I was needed after the storm went through, and I didn't have time to, Probably, I, I probably backed, you know, 10 yards out of my parking spot, and, had to stop 'cause the storm was on top of me. And I looked up, and I was across the street from the Veterans Coliseum here in Marshalltown, and I could see the roof starting to peel off the, Veterans Coliseum, and debris was blowing everywhere, and it was all blowing in my direction. And, my car was, rocking back and forth. by some miracle it wasn't blown over, 'cause there were all kinds of cars that day that were, you know, blown over and stuff like that. But I had debris just raining down on top of me, from the Veterans Coliseum, and just on top of my car. The windows, all the windows in my vehicle except for my windshield blew out that day. And, so I got my, big tail down as low as I could in my car an- and rode it out, and it was probably, you know, just a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity. And, you could just hear the debris raining down. And to this day, I can still taste the grittiness of that in my mouth, and I can smell it. the wet construction material raining down on top of you, those are, sensations that I will never forget. And, I said a prayer. My w- my wife was also working downtown Marshalltown at the time, and our two youngest children were at a, a daycare center, in, in the basement of our church at the time that was downtown as well. So, I, I, I just, I was worried about them and, I... You know, there was a part of me, I thought, "I, I'm not gonna get out of this. I may not see my family again." it was terrifying.

David Miller 13:53

That's just incredible to ride it out in that fashion. and then knowing obviously, you know, as a community leader, community member, and then you, you know, got the force behind you, but also your family's in danger. you know, small community. We're not-- We're a rural community, but not necessarily small, but, you know, we all know where our family and our, our littles are generally.

Mike Tupper 14:11

Yeah

David Miller 14:13

Was there a time where you had to choose between, "Okay, I've, I've kinda got to ride this thing out now," you know, check oneself and then, wh- where did you go from there?

Mike Tupper 14:27

Yeah. So, you know, as fast as the storm was on top of me, you know, you're... I'm inside my vehicle and it seems like an eternity, but then after the storm blows past, it's like complete calm. It, it's, it's hard to describe. I mean, you go from unbelievable chaos And then it's just over. And like, almost like it didn't happen. But, you know, you, you, you, uh... I pulled myself up off the floorboard of my vehicle and dust myself off, um, covered in glass, covered in construction debris. And, um, I look up, and there was a, there was a, a bar and a, and an Asian grocery store that was across the street from the police department, completely destroyed. Completely destroyed. Um, the Veterans Coliseum, which was across the street from where I was, um, badly damaged. Unbelievable damage. you could kinda hear car alarms going off. and the first thing that I s- actually saw when I looked up is one of, one of, our police officers, had gone... He had been inside the police department. He'd gone across the street to the Asian grocery store and w- and was helping somebody crawl out of the debris. and when I saw those buildings, I... Somebody's, somebody has to have died. There's no way to survive this. But, the miracle of that day is we had no deaths and, no real injuries, which it still amazes me.

David Miller 15:59

That's crazy. That's incredible. Wow

Mike Tupper 16:02

But yeah, so the officer was helping somebody out of the debris, and, I had to get to work

James Hoelscher 16:07

Yeah, Mike, that's, that, I, I, that's a question I have is like, you're in your, your tr- your vehicle, you're thinking about your, your kids, your, wife, also in the downtown area It seems like it almost be, must be m-- for someone in your position, it must be muscle memory to almost kick into, okay, it's time to go to work versus I gotta go home, or whatever that might be. Tell us just a little bit about how in that split second leaders handle personal versus professional and just what you're trained to do.

Mike Tupper 16:47

Yeah. So, um, you know, in spite... I think a lot of l- uh, public safety, um, i- in Iowa, especially because we deal with severe weather, we get some training. But I don't think, I don't know that there's amo- no amount of training that could have ever prepared me for this day. But, um, I'd been on a tactical team during my career. Um, I'd, uh, been involved with a lot of, uh, uh, uh, complex emergency responses, and so I had a lot of training and experience, and all of that just kind of kicks in. And, you immediately, you s- you don't think about your personal needs or your family. Although that was always in the back of my mind, my first thought was to account for all of our police officers, to account for our dispatchers who were in the basement of the police department, and the storm had just gone over the top of the police department, and to start, putting resources together so that we could start responding. Because we clearly had a, a horrific amount of damage. And, um, at that point in time, you know, I was convinced that we had to have, people that were trapped that were gonna need our assistance, and we had to start, pooling those resources and, and, and getting our resources together. So, I checked on the officer that was helping the person out of the building. He was okay. our police building itself seemed okay. our, police building was right next door to City Hall, which was right next door to the Veterans Coliseum. So I knew my, my boss, the city manager, was in City Hall. And, so I ran into City Hall to check on all of them. And, my, when we have a emergency event like this, it's all hands on deck and, your elected officials and your city administrator plays a huge role in how we're gonna respond, to, uh, to this event and, all the resources that we're gonna need. So I went, I went to make sure that the city administrator was okay. And, uh, at the time, and th- and this is, not a slight against her 'cause she did a great job, by the way. Her name is Jessica Kinser. Did a great job throughout this whole event and after the event, and she, she no longer works in Marshalltown. She's working in a community in Minnesota. But, she was fairly new to her job. She hadn't been in our community very long. And, so at the time, our emergency operations plan had the city manager kind of being in charge of, um, the, the, the response to the event. And so I found her. She was okay. Everybody in City Hall was okay. But I remember she looked at me, and I was expecting her to, to kind of tell, direct me what to do. But she looked at me, she said, "You're in charge." And that was not really what I wanted to hear, to be honest with you. Okay, and so, generally, police officers and firefighters and people in public safety, they have some general idea how they're gonna handle just about any situation, especially when after you've been on the job for a while, and at that, at that time I'd been on the job for a long time, more than two decades. but I'd never been through anything like this, and so, you know, to be honest with you, my first thought was, "What am I gonna do? What now?" this was, this was completely foreign to me. I, I was used to dealing with crime scenes and police events and, and, and tactical operations, and I, uh, I wasn't... I w- My first thought was, "I, I don't know what to do." But you have to figure it out. You can't, you can't dwell on it. You can't sit there and, and feel sorry for yourself. Um, you, you have to figure it out, and, uh, that's what, that's what we did. And, uh, after, after leaving City Hall, I immediately went up, back inside the police department. Our 911 center was, by some miracle, still operational. I, I still don't know how we didn't lose radio communications that day. that's another miracle. And, our radio, vendor at the time and, and still to this day is, is Raycom. It's based and headquartered in Marshalltown. They provide public safety radios across the Midwest, radio systems across the Midwest. And, uh, their building had been devastated. Devastated. I had no idea. but, they were our backup 911 center, and somehow all of their equipment stayed operational even though their building had... it looked like it had, it had, it was in a third world somewhere, had been bombed. It had been devastated by the storm. But our radio communications were still up, but I quickly figured out that we had, natural gas leaks all over the downtown area, including, to, the, our police department. There was a huge natural gas leak right in the alley right outside our police department, and so we had to, immediately evacuate our building. And so I'm trying to figure out how I'm gonna respond to this event and, you know, you think you, you have your home base. Our emergency operation center was in the basement of the police department. No, we have to leave. We can't be there. And, so now I have to figure out where we're gonna send our 911 operators, how we're gonna keep that operational, and we have to set up an emergency operation center. And, our fire chief at the time, would've, would've been and ended up s- being, the, the co-incident commander with me, but he was out of town. And I had to figure all that stuff out initially, on my own. And what I decided to do is I reached out to the fire department, and their building was okay. And I consulted with the on-duty fire captain, and I let our city manager know, and we moved everybody to, the fire department to set up the emergency operations center. And I called, the president of Raycom, Mike Miller. And again, I had no idea how bad his building was and how much they had just gone through. But I called Mike Miller, and I said, "Mike, we have to evacuate the, nine one one center. Raycom is our designated backup spot. I'm sending our nine one one operators to you. please help them get the nine one one center, backup operations open." without hesitation, he s- he said, "Okay." He didn't, he didn't tell me what, what he was dealing with. He didn't complain. he was just, ready to go to work. And, a couple hours later when I had time to go see his building, I, I just couldn't believe that they did it. I couldn't believe that they were able to help us. but Mike Miller and his team at Raycom are, are real heroes, in this situation, and they kept us going. And I'm convinced if we had lost radio communication that day that maybe we would've had some more negative outcomes. But, we were able to keep communications going. We were able to keep nine one one phones working, and so people were able to call us for the help that they needed

James Hoelscher 23:18

So Mike, and Dave and I have talked about this a bit, based on the flood- floods that he has, led Rock Valley through. But in that scenario, it doesn't seem like leadership is a democracy. in a sense, if the city manager says, "Mike, you're it. You're in charge," how do you balance the, "Okay, I'm not sure what I'm gonna do, but this is what we're gonna do"?

Mike Tupper 23:45

Yeah, I don't know. I think leadership is complicated, and I think, um, especially in public safety, it's never really a democracy. But, as a leader, I have to understand that, I, you know, I don't have all the right ideas, I don't have all the best ideas. I have a team of people. Um, and I was... I, you know, I wanna make very clear, I was blessed to work with a solid team. and not just in the police department, but in our 911 center, the fire department, city in general, the community. Because we, you know, I, I mentioned it, the importance of building relationships in the community. Um, by, by this time I'd been in the community about seven years. We had built so many partnerships in the community, so if there was something that we needed that I couldn't provide, I knew somebody I could call, 'cause I had those relationships. but you have to make some quick decisions and get the ball rolling, because people are looking at you and, and, and they wanna know what to do. And so, you know, my experience of going to the city manager thinking she was gonna take charge, and she told me that I was in charge, um, other people were looking to me like, "What's next?" And so you have to start to figure that out. And so the most important things that I needed to do initially is get the EOC set up and get, uh, our 911 center moved out of our building. And, um, once the EOC was set up, we went down and we started collaborating with the fire department, with other first responders, and started making a plan about how we're gonna respond, to the community. Now, the time of day, played kind of a, a key role and was a challenge for us initially because, it was about 4:00, 4:30 when the storm hit and, most of my leadership team had already gone home. And so I didn't have a lot of supervisors on duty. It was basi- it was a, you know, it was a patrol shift that was on duty and, and their lieutenant, and that was it. And we needed more people. And cell phones weren't really working all that well. It was sporadic. landlines were generally down. but if

James Hoelscher 25:41

They may not be living right in Marshalltown either

Mike Tupper 25:44

No, they don't. There's, many of them had a, had a ways to respond. Um, and, and that, that day, if you talk to people that lived on the south side of Marshalltown, it was like the storm didn't even happen. one of, one of my police captains was outside barbecuing, getting ready for supper. It was like the storm did not even happen on the south side, but the north side was devastated. But, you know, the, we live in a day and age where everybody's got a phone in their pocket, and we should be so easy to get ahold of. if you ever wanna get, a, a fire chief or a police chief riled up, ask them how easy it is to get hold of people, 'cause nobody answers their phones, right? Nobody answers their phones. but our phones were not working that well. Text messaging was not working that well. But oddly, before we evacuated the police department, I was trying to figure out how I could get a message to everybody because I needed help, and our dispatch center was way too busy to start calling officers in. And so I sent out just a blanket email to the entire department. it was I don't even remember what, what exactly it said. It couldn't have been more than two sentences, but, you know, that a tornado had occurred, everybody respond to the fire department, or everybody respond to the police department. And, people got that message, and they started coming in. And so that was very helpful because there's so much going on, during an event like this, and, you, you, you need a lot of help. And, the problem is, is when, you have limited staff, you know, most small communities there's not There's two dispatchers working. There might be, a, a supervisor and four or five police officers on duty at that time. you need a lot more help, and, and those people don't have time to start making phone calls either.

James Hoelscher 27:22

And, they had just, many of them had just went through a similar type of situation that you just did as well. So your volunteers, people are showing up, they just experienced some serious trauma. when you think of... maybe it might be interesting, you talked about having some younger staff. Is, are there one or two examples of people that, you know, "Hey, I didn't know that the, this guy was or gal was gonna be a leader," and all of a sudden they're, they're leading right next to me on this? Is there anyth- any kind of stories like that that emerged as you're starting to lean into this, response?

Mike Tupper 27:58

Every- everybody stepped up that day and in the days that followed, quite frankly. And there's, I'm sure there's dozens of stories that I'm still not even aware of. But I, I'll never forget a young officer, um, k- he was off duty, but he got my email on his phone, and he immediately, responded to the police department. But he couldn't get inside the police department because we had evacuated it, and so nobody could get inside, and all of his equipment was in the basement. So he pieced together, w- what he could from, from his truck and what he had at home and showed up in, in shorts and, and he'd found a uniform shirt and had his duty belt. but he came ready to work, and he didn't complain. And, and, a lot of people that day just stepped up to the plate. And, we have a lot of natural leaders in the Marsh town police department and, you know, they, they didn't need to be told what to do. They found, they found things that needed to be done, and they got them done. our leadership team, we had three captains at the time and, and they were, they all came in and, we gave them assignments, and they all did a great job of carrying out that work and, didn't need to be told what to do. even though this was all new, this was new to all of us, they, they, they figured it out. And, uh, the current chief, his name is Chris Jones, he was one of our, captains at the time, and, he led the search and rescue efforts. And, and I told him, I, I, I partnered him up with a fire, a firefighter employee, and I told him that he was in charge of search and rescue. he didn't, uh, complain. He didn't look at me and say, "Well, nobody's ever trained me to do that." And he s- he didn't say, "I've never done that before." he got with the, got with his fire, fire counterpart, and they figured it out, and they got it done. so the great thing about public safety, I think in Iowa, and I don't know that it's just unique to Iowa, but I think, I think, um, a lot of... I think public safety in Iowa doesn't of- often get the credit it deserves. We just have salt of the earth people in these professions, and many of them are volunteers, when you think about our rural communities. but they want to help their community. And, and during difficult times, they come together, and they get the job done. And, the days after the tornado, we had, we had public safety people throughout the community, um, doing whatever they could to help others, volunteering their time, things of that nature. But, I was just so proud of the people that I worked with that day because, this was new to everybody and, but we figured it out together. And it's not a democracy, and people at, you know, at some level have to make decisions. but, we came together as a team, and I think, you know, sometimes public police departments, fire departments are kinda like dysfunctional families at times. And they're made up of people that don't always see eye to eye, and, all type A personalities. But when the stuff hits the fan,

James Hoelscher 30:53

Yeah

Mike Tupper 30:54

they come together, and that's what happened that day

James Hoelscher 30:57

And, um, Dave, I apologize for monopolizing the conversation. I just-- I have two questions that I wanted to ask, Mike, and then I'll let you jump back in. Mike, same question, but expand it outside of your department to just the rest of the community. Any examples of leadership in action? maybe you didn't even know these people, know this group, and here they just, rolled up their sleeves and leaned in

Mike Tupper 31:26

Well, our entire community, was guilty of that. Everybody. I mean, the... I, I often tell people that, you know, I, I've worked in three communities professionally. I grew up in Dubuque, worked in three communities professionally. Marshalltown is the only place that's ever felt like home to me, and that's why after I retired, we still live here. And, uh, we will, we have, we will live here. I'll, I'll die here. Um, our community, um, struggles at times for resources. Uh- But when, when something happens to their neighbor, people step up and help their neighbor. and, you know, we talked a little bit at the beginning about building relationships. Well, we had relationships built throughout the community, not with just organizations, but with neighborhoods, with individuals, and, um, people were knocking over each other to try to, to get to, to me and to other city leaders just to offer help. And, and, uh, the... One of the, one of the challenges that, that happens when a situation like this occurs is, everybody wants to help, which is a good thing, but managing all the volunteers and everything that come in can sometimes be a huge challenge. And, you know, I've been to, I don't know, countless trainings where, uh, you're told, you know, "Don't self-dispatch as a public safety, um, professional. Um, wait for the call." Well, most, most of the time that doesn't happen, and that didn't happen here. And so we had public safety from all over central Iowa showing up. And so, um, that kind of became a whole other job, is managing the volunteers that came in. But, um, our community itself, the churches, uh, neighborhoods, individuals, um, stepped up big time to help their neighbors. And, uh, you know, I remember hearing stories about neighbors going into, um, homes that were badly damaged to, you know, pull their neighbor out of the house to rescue them, to help them. And then afterwards, you know, um, people, people just helping total strangers to make sure that they had a safe place to be, um, had some food, had some water. that went on for, for weeks and, and to some extent goes on to this day because, you know, um, we're not, we're not fully recovered. When I talk to other police chiefs, um, one of the first things they'll often say to me is, uh, "Have you got everything put back together?" 'Cause, you know, we're, gosh, we're eight years out now. This summer it'll be eight years already. we're not close to being put back together. events like this take a decade or more and, Marshalltown will have the scars, from this storm forever. And, our event was complicated 'cause two years later, you, you know, we went through a dere- derecho. I never even heard of a derecho until 2020, but, you know, everybody in Iowa dealt with that. But, uh,

David Miller 34:24

About, about, the time when you feel like you're just getting the recovery thing and you get kicked in the shins again. I, I think it's always interesting the analogy and kinda what we've always heard here, and then just from my own experience was, you know, the event is almost like a light switch on and off, you know? like you said, the, the storm and the chaos that happened very shortly, and then all of a sudden it's, it's done, and then you gotta, you know, pick up the pieces. And I think the best analogy after that is it's almost like a dimmer switch where you just kinda slowly transition back and forth, and you really don't know where you're at from a response to recovery, 'cause sometimes it's both at the same time. You know, when you have community members on the other side of the community that aren't even affected at all, to the people that have lost absolutely everything and are completely devastated, it really adds, I guess, and, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it, it just adds a little obviously more diversity in the community because, I wouldn't say you separate, the, the haves and have-nots as much as, I think at least in the Midwest, the, the peoples that haven't lost anything are, are very quick to hop in and help and, you know, between cleanup, volunteer, laundry, making meals, showing up to, to help and assist and, you know, all those pieces. It's, it's definitely very interesting.

Mike Tupper 35:38

You know what was interesting about this storm though is, Marshalltown is, again, blue collar and, you know, we're a poor community. we're struggling at times for resources. And the area town that was most significantly damaged was our poorest town. so it was the people that had the least that lost everything. And you know who stepped up the most? Is the people who had the least and lost everything. And so people that, and so people that, And, and that's not... Our, our entire community stepped up, but what always amazed me is that, you know, somebody that had just lost their home found a way to donate five bucks to the cause, or found a way to make sure that their neighbor who just lost their home had something to eat tonight. folks had lost everything, and,

David Miller 36:30

Yeah. It's absolutely incredible to see

Mike Tupper 36:33

So they come, they come together. And so, and this, this, event is, you know, it's, it's kinda You remember 9/11, how our country came together? This event brought our community together in ways that it's hard to s- to describe. And, and you just, you just wish you could keep your community, um, at that level of, uh, family and togetherness long-term because, you know, we all go back about our business and, and then we start, you know, bickering about things that really don't matter. But, um, this event brought our community together, and, uh, it didn't matter. Everybody was, was, was there to help their neighbor. And total strangers helping them

James Hoelscher 37:16

Mike, on that point you talked about earlier, you, you, mentioned the Asian grocery store that got damaged. you've got a large Latino community, so it, it's in the middle of Iowa, but it is a very diverse community. tell us about how that kinda carried over and how those communities responded and how as far as the whole community coming together

Mike Tupper 37:38

Yeah. So, um, it was, I was thankful that we had invested a lot of time in building relationships because language barriers become an issue, cultural barriers become an issue, and, you know, phones are down, and so you have to find a way to communicate with everybody. And so thankfully, we, um, had relationships with leadership, uh, um, um, community leaders, and so they could help us, uh, communicate with the entire community. but, uh, that was a, a huge challenge is, is keeping everybody on the same page and making sure that everybody, had the, had the information that they needed. Um, because, uh, like I said, language barriers were such a, um, uh, a complicated issue. I wouldn't call it a problem, it just complicates the issue. And so, um, you have to work with your community leaders to make sure that it, everybody has the information that they need and that, and, and as importantly, that we have the information that we need to, to help, uh, educate our response and, and know what we need to do to the commun- do, do for the community to help them get through this horrific event

David Miller 38:42

Yeah, I think communication goes both ways. I think as a, as a community that's gone through something like this, it's so important to, to communicate out to the community, but also internally to, you know, the folks making decisions and everything. But I know in my past life, just knowing communication had to come back up the stream too, so we, we knew and what was understanding of what was going on. How did you, how did you approach and gather information and intel, you know, around the community? What's happening? What do they need? the community's needs, and maybe that'll blend into what are the next 90 days to six months to the year kinda look like as you transpired through s- the recovery side of things?

Mike Tupper 39:18

Well, we had to, um, we had to come up with u- unique ways of getting information out and getting information in too because, um, you know, most of the, uh... Everybody's lost power in the, in the affected area, right? And so everybody relies so heavily on their cell phones, but, um, what happens when your cell phone no longer has a battery? Um, our local radio station was also de- devastated by the storm, but, um, they somehow found a way to keep operational, and we used them a lot to communicate with the public. Um, but you know, we were asking, uh, first responders in the community, um, to, uh, gather as much intel as they could and send it back to us so we knew what we were dealing with and, and, uh, how we needed to respond. And, uh, um, I remember, that night, you know, we hel- you hold press conferences and all that stuff, but the people that really need to hear that information aren't, aren't receiving it 'cause they don't have the ability to receive it. And so we're going out into the neighborhoods and kinda holding like almost a, a town hall type meeting in, in a neighborhood just to share information. "And here's where you can get water. Here's what we're doing. Um, here's, here's what we know about the, uh, when the power's gonna come back on. And, uh, um, here's where you can go get a hot meal," things, things of that nature. We had to, we had to, uh, do that the old-fashioned way and get out on, on foot and talk to people and make sure we're pr- uh, providing that information. Our police officers were going up and down the affected areas and stopping and talking to everybody and just sharing information with them so they, they had what they needed to, uh, find the resources that they needed.

David Miller 40:55

what is your leadership approach, now today versus maybe even before the incident? What does that look like? Or your last couple years? did things change or did you remain the same?

Mike Tupper 41:09

I don't know. You should pr- you probably have to ask some people that worked for me. I don't know. That's a good question. Um, I don't think... I mean, so I worked in law enforcement for 32 years and, and when I retired, I wasn't the same person as when I started, you know? And I was a police chief for over 20 years, and I g- I, I hope, I hope this is true that I was a better police chief in, in my last year than I was in my first year. I think, I think what this event did for me is reinforced for me that it was important to, rely on, the people that you work with, to trust them. it was important to, have open lines of communication with everybody that you work with. and that we were on the right path in terms of how we were building relationships in the community and, because if we hadn't done some of those things, I don't know that we would have gotten through this event, as successfully as we did. so it, it certainly reinforced for me the importance of relationship building and, and, uh, even though we were doing a lot of that, I think we doubled our efforts after, after the storm. from a, a tactical standpoint, we dusted off our, tornado operations plan that nobody could find the day of the event, even though one existed because nobody had looked at it, right? It's one of those plans that was in a binder somewhere, and we had to blow the dust off. so the importance of, keeping your plans up to date and, you know, doubling your efforts to train for these types of events that you think are never gonna happen, but they do. so, I think, I think my relationship with, our partners in the community, even though I thought it was pretty good at the time, I think it got better because we went through something together. And, I think the relationship the police department had with the community also got, got better because we all went through something together and, uh, we, we, we learned. You know, we talk about trust and transparency. we learned from that event that the community could trust us and that we could trust them, and, uh, it helped with our partnerships.

James Hoelscher 43:09

Mike, I really like the message about trust. Many of our listeners are going to be listening to this and thinking about their own communities and, kind of almost like they're, being proactive by listening to this. But, many of us may never go through something like, the, the tornado in Marshalltown. But what lessons, maybe leadership lessons that you l- learned from responding to this tornado might translate over to somebody just running their own business or running an organization or being on a church board that has nothing to do with maybe a crisis like that, but, just leadership in general? Do you have any tips or insight that, nuggets that we, we might be able to share with people listening in?

Mike Tupper 44:01

I, I, for me, it's just always been about relationships and communication. And I have, um, I think communication is something that, um, most of us fail at on a routine basis, and I- I'm guilty of that as well. but you have to every day, it has to be a focus of your attention. You have to work daily on building relationships. And so I think I said ear- earlier that, you know, your relationship, whether it's with the community or with the people you work with or with your company or your employees, your relationships are the most important thing, to whatever it is you're doing. You know, for me it was being a police chief, but if you're running a business, your relationships with your employees and your customers, most important thing you have. And you have to nurture that, and you can't take it for granted. And, uh, um, you know, in public safety, uh, you might have a good relationship with your community today, but it just takes one event, one silly thing to happen to completely wipe it out and destroy it. And so, um, for us it was always important to continually nurture the relationship we have with the community, um, to, uh, protect it. And so when things did happen that we wish hadn't happened, people would give us the benefit of the doubt because they had built up trust with us, and we had built up trust with them. I think where police departments often fail is they think they have all the answers for their community, and they don't listen to the community, and, uh, they, they tell the community what the community needs. And I was an outsider. I knew I couldn't do that. I came from the outside. I had some ideas about how to run a police department and what makes a safe community, but, um, the community has a better idea. And so as a leader too, I think it's important to, to always remember that, um, uh, you might be pretty smart. I've never thought of myself that way. But, um, usually as I got older, I felt like I was the dumbest person in the room, quite frankly. I, I got dumber as I got older, I felt like. But, um, I was a lot more, a lot more confident at 25 than I was at 55. But, um, you have to remember that, uh, the people you work with have great ideas, and the, and the community or your customers, if you're running a business, they have great ideas as well. And, uh, you have to make sure that, um, some sort of avenue exists for those ideas to be exchanged and that, that, um, you can learn from each other

David Miller 46:36

I know I found myself personally a lot more patient, to new ideas and things afterwards as you kinda, you know, you work in that, I wouldn't say inner circle, but, the circle of making decisions and you get into kind of that d- democratic voice of, of reason with people, throwing ideas out there. because when you're struggling, you know, say through those first few hours, you're, you're kinda throwing everything at the wall of what, what can we do? Where we gotta go? What's gonna work? And I think that transfers, you know, into that long-term resiliency planning too. So for me, it's always been patience and just, uh, listening to people. So interesting and I, I find it really cool that I, I just hearing kinda through between the lines that you're, you're very interested, uh, in that side of things too, so

Mike Tupper 47:22

Flexibility too, right? You have to have flexibility. And, uh, patience is a great word. Um, patience is not a virtue for me and, uh, something I have to work on every day. But in an event like this especially, you have to have flexibility because some of the things you try just aren't gonna work, right? Or, or it's a dumb idea. It's just a dumb idea, and you have to move on. So, um, being flexible

David Miller 47:43

and I think we, we actually had it written in our incident command somewhere, but it was kind of a control what you can control. You know, everything else is outside of the box. We'll, we'll get to that when we can control it. But for today, you know, we're gonna concentrate on what we can do and not worry about the things that are, you know, surrounding us. So that's awesome. I mean, what sticks out to you most maybe, again, I think going back to the, the one guy that, Reno 911'd it, and put his, put his stuff together and, and, and came in and made it work. But, you know, is there something else that maybe just like the one thing that just grabs you every time, maybe when you drive by it and, I know for me personally, sometimes it's just cruising through different areas of the community, but it's, there's always something that points out. Is there something that sticks with you every time?

Mike Tupper 48:29

It's difficult for me to articulate. I, I just don't know that I have the words or I'm smart enough to, to articulate it. But, um, the thing that I always want people to understand about Marshalltown and this event is the sense of community and how we all came together to help each other, and how we embraced each other. And, you know, even the different cultures and, you know, um, the language barriers, none of that mattered at that point. It- none of it mattered, and our community just came together. And so even though life goes on and we kinda all go our separate ways at some point and we start worrying about our own siloed issues, what we learned from this event in Marshalltown was that when times are difficult, our community's gonna come together and support each other. And, uh, um, we- maybe we don't have the corner on that market, but I just feel like, um, Marshalltown is, is a special place to live, uh, because the people truly care about each other. And, uh, um, when it really matters, they will come together and help each other

David Miller 49:38

That's cool. That's, that's great. I, I, you know, I-- we feel that in my community. I, I think that's, uh, the same. I visited your community, toured around, met leadership a couple times, and I, I can, I can attest to that as well. So maybe, maybe paint us just a picture or two, a brushstroke, quickly. what does, what does Marshalltown look like today, versus, you know, eight years ago before it happened? And, and do you, do you feel as a community that this set you up and above and, made Marshalltown better?

Mike Tupper 50:08

Yeah, we're... First of all, we always want everybody to know Marsh Town's open for business, and we're working hard every day to, um, recover and overcome this, this event. we don't quite have, the trees that we used to have, but we're working on that. we got, we got a few empty spaces downtown where buildings used to sit, but we're working on that too. I think at the end of the day, because our community still is working together on recovery, at the end of the day our community's gonna be, a lot stronger and a lot better than we would've been had the storm never occurred. because it's, it's forced us to start thinking outside the box and start thinking about the future and, and how, uh, we want Marsh Town to look as a community and how we want it to function as a community. So we've got a lot of great young leaders in the community working in, throughout, throughout the community in, in the business sector and, with churches, with, public safety, and, uh, in education and, and they're doing great things and we're gonna, we're g- we have a bright future here. Still work to be done, though

David Miller 51:15

Always work to be done, right?

James Hoelscher 51:17

Yeah, absolutely. Mike, this has just been such an interesting conversation. we really appreciate your time and walking us through kind of a, from a personal and pro- professional perspective. very insightful. I've, I very much enjoyed the, our conversation

David Miller 51:33

I appreciate your time too, and it's good to see you again and, and good to get to know you a little better. And, we appreciate just the, the words of wisdom and, and everything else that's, come through. But, again, my hat's off to you, for going through what you did and, and stepping up and, continuing to lead too from, from what I understand. And, yeah. Thank you. Appreciate your time

Mike Tupper 51:52

I, I should probably add that I did eventually check on my family. I don't want anybody to think I forgot my family. And they were, they were

David Miller 52:00

four or what?

Mike Tupper 52:04

No

James Hoelscher 52:04

case they were listening, we'll, we'll, we'll fill that back in.

Mike Tupper 52:07

Yeah. 'Cause we kind of, we kind of moved past that, but yeah, I did, I, I, I did make sure that they were okay, and they, and they all did well, too. So, but

David Miller 52:15

We'll, we'll throw that in there somewhere.

Mike Tupper 52:17

Okay Yeah. Well, thank you, guys. I appreciate it. Thank you. I'm sorry I was late. Yeah.

David Miller 52:24

you. See ya

James Hoelscher 52:25

i've really enjoyed talking to him

David Miller 52:28

He's a, he's a cool character too. I mean, as, as far as, you know, I, I think when you talk about leadership and how people functions to have a cool head on you like Mike does when you're going through that kind of scenario nobody's yelling across the room or freaking out. It's, it's just a, a very cool, calm conversation and, and direct. I like-- I kinda liked his, you know, tossing ideas out there, and being, being a listener. I think that was kind of an interesting conversation too is yes, people are gonna throw stuff at you 'cause they have to because you're, you're in a whole new element.

James Hoelscher 53:02

I'm very, I'm very interested in the kind of the leadership is muscle memory, kind of a piece of it for, for people that, like yourself and, and, and Mike, and, and a few others that they're-- they went through training, you know, whether it's role-playing scenarios, even, you know, small crisis, how that may have groomed them so when it really does hit the fan, they're ready to go. And it's interesting because in teaching ethics that in visiting with, ethics chairs at, at the university I work at, one of the only ways to create an ethical organization is to do that scenario, have a scenario role-playing ahead of time, talk about things, in a sense, talk it through multiple times before it ever happens. so if you think there's an ethical issue in your organization, you know, um, "Hey, something happened in, in, in another state or another county, similar kind of organization. Let's talk about that. What would we do?" Those kinds of scenarios are, are the only thing that will truly make an organization more ethical. Similarly, when we're talking about these storm-tested communities, what have they done ahead of time that when it does hit the fan, they're just, they just muscle memory kicks in. You know, i-in that scenario, he has to put his community, his job before his family. not that he's not thinking about them and concerned about them. even when we talked to Chad, Schreck, and we're talking about what he went through from Mason City, Iowa, completely different scenario, but, you know, he had thought about different kinds of projects prior to that one ever coming up. And so while some of the people, in the community just jumped at the idea of, "Hey, we could have this huge plant come to our community," he, you know, his response was a little bit measured, and so he was able to step back, and that's-- I just find that very interesting aspect of leadership

David Miller 55:16

I think definitely in the EMS world, you know, they're trained to do this day in and day out. They probably live stressful scenarios, and they are, they are generally the calming voice in the room, uh, especially around elected officials. You know, if you talk natural disaster storm side of things, I'm not gonna say the, the politician or, or local elected officials are, are not cool-headed. But generally, you know, uh, the people that have EMS background in the room are definitely the ones that are probably a little, a little calmer, knowing, you know, they've been some, you know, through a stressful environment before. We've made it through. This is how we work together. and then I think those people can learn from that. And I think if you transfer that into the real world, you know, business and culture, organizational management, whether that's, you know, for-profit, non-profit, I, I think that same thing applies. You know, communication, calmness, listening to ideas, you know, working through problems, tossing out scenarios, and being open to, A, be- being a mentee but also being a mentor. I think that's-- it goes both ways

James Hoelscher 56:20

And don't you think that the relationship building is also huge because you give a little-- you give people a little bit more grace if you have that relationship with them, and you feel like, you know, if I'm working with you and, and I know, that y- that you've got strengths and that you've performed in other ways in the past, you've got that relationship and you cut each other a little slack, and you're working this together versus just not

David Miller 56:47

Yeah, but you know, in a disaster situation like this, there's newbies that show up, whether they're, you know, a, first responder, EMS, fire, PD, whatever from a neighboring community or state, or maybe it's a, a federal official. There's people that show up at the door that you maybe have no, uh, background with or camaraderie with that, it's-- I have, I have friends through ours that it was an instant friendship, and probably just being candid and direct because that's how you have to be with each other in reports and different things. So, you know, I think you build, you build relationships very quickly in those situations. But I think you need to, again, like you said, lean on the ones that you've already built.