Career as pastor awaits retiree.

Byline: Bill Bishop The Register-Guard

ALSEA - Salmon and steelhead run up a tributary of Bummer Creek, which lies just over the fence in Brian Leavitt's backyard. It's quiet out on this six-acre patch of the Coast Range. From his back deck, you can hear bees in the flamboyant flower beds where his wife, Chris, snips blooms for a centerpiece.

The Leavitts moved out here in 1997 not to get away from it all, but to get into it all.

"It's a fabulous place to raise a family. You know everybody. Everybody is down-to-earth. There are loggers, teachers, a touch of Eugene. Everybody makes part of the community," Leavitt says. "We moved to this community to be part of the community, not to be recluse."

After his retirement this month as deputy U.S. marshal supervising the Eugene office, Leavitt is left with his second - and equally important - career, as a preacher for the Lobster Valley Church of Christ.

It was their love for the 40-member congregation, after all, that compelled the couple to move with their five children from Junction City.

The decision created a 66-minute one-way commute for Leavitt, yet another sacrifice among the many he made to have both his careers.

He admits feeling some regret about the anniversaries, first steps, birthdays and graduations he's missed over the years; about leaving it to Chris to shoulder the unexpected, inevitable trials of parenting. That's the price demanded of the U.S. Marshal Service.

Assignments take deputies out of town, sometimes out of the country, for four to six months out of the year. But Leavitt, 50, has known since he was 11 that he wanted to be a cop. He knew the marshal service was his place when - after working in military police, sheriff and city police jobs - he signed on at age 22 as the youngest deputy marshal hired in a century.

The marshal service is the enforcement arm of federal courts, and more.

With about 3,000 deputies nationwide, marshals made more than 35,000 federal fugitive arrests in 2005 in the United States and around the world. They provide security for local judges and international diplomats. They moved 17,000 people through the federal witness protection program. They manage prisoner transportation and security, and partner with local and state law enforcement in special programs and investigations.

Leavitt, who retired at a top-scale salary of just under $100,000, filled all those roles in his career.

He worked on a security force for Britain's Princess Anne at the Olympic Games in 1984. He protected diplomats at the historic nuclear test ban treaty talks in the mid-1980s. He worked in foreign countries, including Albania during its tumultuous transition from communism to democracy, and amid the poverty and disease in African nations.

He was in a platoon of body-armored, rifle-packing, black-clad lawmen who stormed over a sand dune on the Oregon Coast to arrest an armed most-wanted suspect strolling the beach on gorgeous day. He waited on surveillance for a month to help nab another most-wanted - an undercover mission that ended in a made-for-TV take down inside a Klamath Falls truck stop.

But the work of a deputy marshal is not all adrenaline, world travel and discreetly standing around among powerful people with an Uzi submachine gun under your baggy suit coat.

"It's long periods of monotony interrupted by moments of terror," Leavitt says, only half-joking.

Ironically, the more public part of Leavitt's career, as supervisory deputy in Eugene, was the less visible.

When bad things did not happen inside the federal building and courthouse in Eugene, when the homes of local judges remained safe despite threats by criminal gangs, it was Leavitt's people at work, says U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin.

Thousands of criminal hearings in Coffin's court have gone virtually incident-free. Coffin says prisoners are less likely to act out when they've been handled with respect.

Leavitt, his five deputies and 14 court security officers also act ahead of time to deal with inmates' families or supporters, or people involved in emotionally charged civil or bankruptcy cases who may not understand how the system works, or how they're supposed to behave in court.

"They are our real backbone in criminal cases, but not just criminal cases," Coffin says.

Defense lawyers, often treated as stepchildren in the justice system, are on equal footing with the local marshal's office, says defense lawyer Terri Wood of Eugene. When a lawyer needs to see a client in federal custody, the marshal's door is open and the job gets done, she says.

"You just deal with people as human beings," Leavitt says. "It's harder to say 'yes.' But 'yes' pays dividends - not in what people do for you, but in the working environment."

In his more than 27 years in the service, Leavitt says he never considered working in any of the other 93 marshal districts because of the working environment in Oregon created by the people in the many agencies the marshals work with.

Standing outside a spotless country church, Leavitt looks ahead to his second career and is grateful for his first.

"I have no shortage of sermon material," he says.

BRIAN LEAVITT

Job: Deputy U.S. Marshal (retired)

Family: Married, five children ages 13 to 32

Claim to fame: When hired, was youngest deputy marshal in a century