Former German police officer finds new career in bird supplies
Herb Pawlik has come a long way, from a top cop in Munich, Germany, to selling avian supplies in Coeur d’Alene. Here’s the story of his journey:
Born in 1948 in the capital of Bavaria, he grew up just north of the city’s famed English Garden. At a thousand-plus acres it’s the largest public park in Europe, with woodlands, meadows, ponds, streams and wildlife.
“I played there as a kid, and that’s where I developed my affection for the outdoors, including birds,” he says.
But translating his love for critters into a job would have to wait until he finished two careers as a policeman.
And in Germany, he says, being a policeman is really a career, not just a job.
To prepare for that career, he spent four years, from 1965 to 1969, in a state police academy. Following his graduation he was assigned to his hometown as a uniformed cop.
That was during the time of the Baader-Meinhof Gang, also known as the Red Army Faction – a group of young terrorists dedicated to creating a Marxist-type government through violence, including assassinations and bombings.
“If you were a policeman then, it was a good time to make a name for yourself,” Pawlik says.
He joined an undercover patrol unit with two senior officers in 1970, then was assigned to Munich police headquarters to help plan for the 1972 Olympics. That was his duty station when eight Palestinian terrorists invaded the Israeli compound. The confrontation that ensued resulted in the deaths of 11 Israeli athletes, a German policeman and five terrorists.
After additional schooling in 1973 and 1974, Pawlik was promoted to lieutenant. Then, as a captain, he served for five years on a special weapons and tactics team. During those years he attended law school for nine semesters.
It was during his SWAT assignment that he helped capture a group of robbers that had held up eight to 10 banks.
He also arrested one man 36 times for traffic infractions after having his license permanently suspended for manslaughter. The man had falsely claimed he was a Spanish citizen when in reality he was a German. He served a three-year prison sentence.
Pawlik’s efficiency reports put him in the top 1 percent of the police force, so he was selected to attend a two-year public administration school for training to be a police executive. Following graduation, he interned with the German equivalent of the FBI and with the border police.
In 1983, he was appointed chief of Munich’s downtown police station, commanding 228 officers in that city of 1.2 million.
In 1987, he recounts, a political superior in the state government ordered Pawlik to remove homeless people from the downtown area.
“I told him that there was no law that would permit that, that I would be putting my officers in a precarious position. If there was a confrontation and someone got hurt, the officer would be liable. But the official, the secretary of state for Bavaria, insisted we do it anyway.”
During his early school years, Pawlik had learned English as well as French, Italian and Latin, so he was qualified to take law enforcement courses in the U.S.
In 1986, he’d attended a six-week juvenile justice training course at the University of Southern California and had made some friends. The following year, he was heading back to Los Angeles for a meeting related to child abuse.
“I got thinking on that plane ride about the position that the secretary of state was putting me and my officers in. When I returned to Munich, I resigned from my job.”
His marriage to a pediatric nurse was on the rocks so, Pawlik figured, he had nothing to lose by immigrating to the states. For the first two years he worked for a security company in Orange County, then for a hotel security company. It was on that job that he met his current wife, Rachel, who was working the front desk at a hotel to which he was assigned.
He then was hired by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, where he designed some 75 training programs for its 4,000 employees and recruited a cadre of 200 part-time teachers. It’s a job he held for nearly 15 years.
Rachel Pawlik has a medical problem: She’s acutely sensitive to heat, so the couple researched to find a cooler climate. “And,” he says, “I missed the mountains, trees and rivers of Bavaria. North Idaho is very similar to the area where I was born and raised. It’s cool, too, so I retired from the Sheriff’s Department and we moved.”
They arrived here in March 2004, and Pawlik spent the next 18 months improving the 10-acre parcel he and Rachel bought above Squaw Bay. He purchased the Wild Birds Unlimited store in the Sunset Mall last November and has been operating it every Monday through Saturday since.
Pawlik says he maintains good contact through e-mails and phone calls with his two children who remain in Munich, a daughter, 34, who is a housewife, and his 30-year-old son, an attorney. He and Rachel plan a trip to visit the children in the near future.
He contrasts police procedures in the United States with those of Germany: “To me, it’s ironic that here in the ‘land of the free,’ the first thing an officer does with a subject is handcuff him. In Germany, that’s considered a part of the use of force. If a suspect runs, that’s an additional crime.”
He says the social structures of the two societies are similar, but attitudes toward weapons are different. In Germany, it’s unlawful to own a gun without a permit.
But, he says, he’s truly found a home here in North Idaho.
“I have great neighbors and really enjoy the people who come into the store. They like wildlife, just like I do.”