The Governor appointed a new sheriff for Pell County three months after Voss was suspended. Her name is Gloria Tennant. She’s a retired Georgia State Patrol captain, fifty-eight years old, and she grew up in the next county over.
Her first act as sheriff was to require body cameras on every deputy and to post the department’s complaint process on the county website. She also hired an independent auditor to review every arrest the department had made in the past ten years. Forty-one convictions were flagged for review. Nineteen have been vacated so far.
Her second act was to offer Caleb Miller a promotion to sergeant.
He turned it down.
“I don’t want to be in charge of anybody yet,” he told her. “I want to learn how to do this right first.”
So she made him the department’s evidence and records officer instead. He’s in charge of making sure every dollar seized goes into the evidence log, every complaint gets a number, and no report gets changed after it’s filed.
He keeps a new notebook on his desk, a blue one from Dollar General, still a dollar and twenty-five cents. Last time I visited, it was half full.
“What’s in it?” I asked.
He smiled.
“Things that went right,” he said. “Sheriff Tennant told me to start writing those down too. She said a man who only writes down the bad things eventually forgets there are any good ones.”
I went back to Pell County last spring for the dedication of The Notebook clinic at Mount Zion. The whole congregation was there in their Sunday best, along with half the town. Kayla Dupree, the waitress, came, and so did the old man from the counter at the Magnolia Diner, who’d half stood up and then sat back down. He found me after the service and shook my hand for a long time.
“I should’ve said something that day,” he said. “I should’ve stood up.”
“You’re standing up now,” I said.
Aunt Lorraine walked down the aisle on her own two feet, with a cane instead of a walker. She cut the ribbon on the clinic door with a pair of pinking shears she’d used to cut out bulletin board letters for thirty-four years.
Jaylen Greene gave the dedication speech. He was a junior at Fort Valley now, with a 3.8 GPA, and planning to apply to law school.
“My great-grandmama used to say that the truth is like a seed,” he said. “You can bury it, but you can’t stop it from growing. Somebody just has to water it.”
He looked out at Caleb Miller in the third row in his deputy’s uniform.
“Somebody kept a notebook,” he said. “And that was enough water.”
After the service, we had supper in the fellowship hall: fried chicken, collard greens, macaroni and cheese, and sweet potato pie made from Hattie Greene’s recipe, which her granddaughter had found in a recipe box in the farmhouse on Cypress Creek.
I ate two pieces. Aunt Lorraine ate three and swore she’d only had one.
Specialty: Legal & Financial Drama
Michael Carter covers stories where money, power, and personal history collide. His writing often explores courtroom battles, business conflicts, and the subtle strategies people use when pushed into a corner. He focuses on grounded, realistic storytelling with attention to detail and believable motivations.