By DEBRA HAIGHT
BCR Correspondent
ST. JOSEPH, MI – Berrien County Commissioners have handled a number of items at recent county board meetings. They honored the man in charge of county emergency management for over a decade and appointed his successor as well as applauded the gift of a service animal to an area veteran.
Rockey Adams retired in late February after more than 25 years of service to Berrien County. During that time, he served in a variety of roles with the Berrien County Sheriff’s Office including as a marine deputy, jail deputy, road patrol deputy investigator, detective sergeant, lieutenant and captain.
During his years as a captain, he had been the Coordinator of the Emergency Management Homeland Security Division for the county from 2013 until his retirement this year. Even before that appointment, he had served on the hazardous materials response team, had graduated from the FBI Hazardous Devices School and was a bomb technician.
As captain, he and his team led extensive training initiatives that prepared thousands of first responders and community partners across West Michigan and strengthened regional emergency preparedness. He has secured more than $8 million in homeland security grant funding for Southwest Michigan.
His tenure with the Sheriff’s Office also saw him playing a key role in coordinating the response to several major emergencies over the years. Those emergencies included the 2011 Sawyer truck explosion, the 2012 international terror plot, the 2017 apartment complex bombing, the 2017 Niles tornado, and the 2018 flood.
He also helped coordinate the 2020 pandemic response, the 2022 Christmas blizzard and power outage, the 2024 Kalamazoo tornado, support of the Palisades nuclear plant restart, and advancement of public alerting through the nation’s largest nuclear Integrated Public Alert and Warning System study.
Adams has won a number of awards over the years, including the 2025 Distinguished Emergency Manager Award from the Michigan Emergency Management Association.
With Adams’ retirement, County Commissioners voted to appoint Captain David Albers as the new Emergency Management Coordinator as well as Lieutenant Kevin Higgs as the Deputy Coordinator. Both appointments were recommended by Berrien County Sheriff Chuck Heit.
Last week’s county board meeting also featured the presentation of a service support animal to an area veteran. Berrien County Veterans Service Officer Maureen Adams briefed commissioners on the program before the presentation.
“We’re here today to hand off our first veterans support animal,” Adams told commissioners. “We were approached by a member of the community foundation at the end of last year about doing a veterans service project. We put out a request for applications and received a dozen applications.”
Adams introduced the person chosen to receive the service animal. She noted that Tammy Robinson was in the army from April 1988 to February of 1993 and has been working with two animal training companies, Magnum K9 and Warrior K9, since being chosen.
Adams said that Warrior K9 started training veteran support dogs in 2019 and then brought Magnum K9 on in 2021 because of the need to train more animals for police as well as veterans and the disabled. The two companies serve five or six counties in Michigan.
Magnum K9 owner Scott LaRoe said that they continue to work with the animals and their new owners even after the official hand off. “Our training really never stops,” he said. “We have already worked with Tammy and we will be doing more over the next four to five weeks to help them get out in public more and also if she needs more traning.”
Robinson and her new dog, Ollie, were on hand at the county board meeting and thanked commissioners for their support of the program. She said that getting the dog was an answer to prayers.