Menchville High School has a mid-year addition to the security team this year: Resource Officer Sean Wilder. You may have seen him directing buses outside the school every day after class, or you may have spotted him in the hallways talking to students. More likely, you’ve probably noticed his habit of playing his guitar outside the lunchrooms before and after first lunch. However you may know him, many agree that Wilder is one of the most visible security staff members.

Wilder has been in law enforcement for a total of eleven years, and in this time he has managed to work just about everywhere- including a time at Denbigh High School just down the road, where he gained notoriety for sponsoring ‘Kicking it with Cops,’ a soccer game between the students and cops. But, surprisingly, being on the police force was not his first plan. Wilder originally sent in applications for both the military and the police force. Yet, as luck would have it, about a month before Wilder was set to depart for bootcamp, the police offered him a job on the force. Wilder took them up on the offer and worked on the street for the next eight years. But, after eight years, he decided is was time to do something different. Wilder applied to be a School Resource Officer, and he has been working as an SRO for the past three years. While the job is not a new experience for him, working at Menchville certainly is.

There are many aspects of working at MHS that Wilder enjoys, but if he had to pick his favorite, it would have to be the fact that we have a guitar class. “It’s fun to see the kids play guitar because I’ve been playing for a long time and I enjoy it. It’s nice to see other people enjoy the same things I do,” he said.  Wilder has been playing guitar for about twelve years and he has gotten habit for playing it in the hall outside the Menchville cafeteria.  As it turns out, he has a very specific reason why he does this. “When you first saw me and you guys didn’t know me, you just saw some dude in a police uniform, you think ‘Do I approach him? Do I not? How is he? How is he going to react?’ But when you see me playing guitar, the intimidation factor kind of goes away. And that’s the whole point.”

Wilder has worked hard to connect to all the kids he’s worked with. Principle Bobby Surry says, “He’s a great fit for Menchville. He communicates well with everyone, he obviously loves students and being around students, and I think he understands what students are all about; you can sense that he enjoys what he’s doing. He is also a phenomenal police officer, and that’s what comes first. He’s a police officer first, who enjoys working with students and wants them to see him as someone who can help them, someone who is there for them.”