From the ground floor

The new chief has the distinction of working his way through the ranks, serving as a patrol officer, school resource officer, field training officer, firearms instructor and commercial crimes unit detective sergeant. He is believed to be the first Tigard chief to rise through the ranks and become chief in Oregon’s 12th most populous city.

But McDonald didn’t start out wanting to become a police officer, having first received a degree in geography and community planning from Eastern Oregon University. While he called community planning something that “really interests me,” he also recalled a scarce job market in the early 1990s when he graduated.

“So I went and I sold building materials for like eight years, and I finally decided, you know, maybe it’s time to do something that I could see myself doing for the rest of my life — for the rest of my career, at least,” he recalled.

He also had several acquaintances who were in law enforcement and thought it sounded like an interesting career.

What he discovered is “the more I looked into it, the more I thought, ‘wow, this really feels like something that can be a good fit’ and it turns out, years later, it’s been very rewarding.”