Records clerk shows 30 years of dedication to police department

Michael Shellman
Michael Shellman

When Michael Shellman, a Jefferson City Police Department records clerk, won the city's Outstanding Employee Service award in May, his first thought was, "Why me?"

Shellman, who graduated from Marymount College in Salina, Kansas, with a degree in business administration, has worked at JCPD for 30 years helping process officers' paperwork and working with records requests. While at the police department, he also worked for the state for 26 years and made his way to director of records and information management for the Missouri Secretary of State's Office before retiring in 2013.

He never planned to work at the police department, though. He was originally sent to the department through Manpower - an agency that places people with certain skills with employers who need temporary employees - to do data cleanup because the department was changing its computer systems. From there, Shellman started transcribing for officers and eventually became a records clerk.

Shellman is not the first in his family to work for the state. He said working at the state is something that "runs in my blood" because his mother worked in the Department of Revenue as a clerk while raising four children as a single parent, and his grandmother worked as a lab technician for the state while also serving parties at night and on the weekends.

He said both women are role models to him, and he tries to follow their examples in his current job - which means sometimes staying late to make sure everything is taken care of.

"I had two mentors who had that strong work ethic, and it was just instilled in me," he said. "So I'm not a workaholic, but when I see work that needs to be done, I just do it."

While keeping positive outlooks and trying to see others' point of view are a couple of things Shellman tries to do, he said the best quality to bring to this job is customer service.

"You provide a good customer service, not only outside of the organization and the people you deal with in the public, but also inside the organization as well because they're your inside people, your coworkers, your supervisors or what-have-yous," he said. "They're your customers as well, so you're dealing with two sets of customers; and you always want to keep your customers happy."

Shellman said he was humbled to receive the award, but there are many city employees who are "unsung heroes." And he hopes to pay it forward.

"The thing that keeps me going is the men and women out there on the street," he said. "They're great, and they deal with a lot of stuff so if I can provide them with the best possible customer service, dealing with their paperwork and helping them with their documentation and getting that where it needs to be without them having to worry about it. That makes everything a whole lot better."