The morning of his interview, Chris Owen was driving to Effingham to inspect a Troop of Illinois State Police officers. Uniforms. Vehicles. Readiness. Command presence. He knew what he would tell them when he got there: This is your opportunity to be the best you — what you can bring to the public.

He had heard something like it before. Decades earlier, as a young basketball player at Salem Community High School, a coach named Paul Kreke made his entire team learn to tie a necktie. On game days, they dressed like professionals. No exceptions. At the time, it might have seemed like a small detail. Years later, Owen understood it was never about the tie.

"It's about standards," he said. “And what you walk by, becomes the standard.”

A 1997 graduate of Salem Community High School — and an inductee of both its Athletic and Academic Halls of Fame — Owen is now the Colonel responsible for the Illinois State Police Division of Patrol, overseeing approximately 1,200 troopers across one of the nation's most complex states. He came up through the streets. K-9 operations, interdiction work, criminal investigations, DEA task force assignments, and violent crime response. Not an administrative career — an operational one. He still works the streets alongside his Troopers.

But ask him how he got there, and he won't start with Springfield or the State Police. He'll start in Selmaville.

Growing up in the small community outside Salem, Owen learned early that achievement wasn't something handed to people. His parents raised five children and, late in life, opened their home to an adopted son — now about six years old. His sister has adopted children as well. "This demonstrates the type of people they are," Owen said. That ethic — service as a way of being, not just a choice — ran through the whole household.

It extended into the community. Owen pointed out how much of an impact the community had on him growing up - the people of Selmaville and Salem served a very important role in his life. As an example, Owen spent years working alongside men at the Salem Township Highway Department, out on county roads, doing hard physical labor. No textbook lessons there. "Real life, no-shit, in-your-face people," he said. "They get up every day and show up and go to work, and they taught me how to work really hard." Those lessons sat alongside the ones from his coaches in both grade school and high school and stuck just as deep. Owen also recalled coach Elwood at the Selmaville Grade School, who, along with his father, helped teach him the importance of hard work and respect.

One of the most influential coaches was Kirby Phillips, whom Owen first met not in high school but in grade school. Phillips coached track and cross country at Salem for years, and what he taught went well past athletics. "He taught me that what really matters in life is the process and discipline it takes to achieve your goals," Owen said, "whether that's on a sports field or later in life." He still carries it.

After graduation, Owen attended Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where he ran track and cross country while earning a degree in Administrative Justice. He wasn't certain where his career would lead. He poured concrete, worked construction, and took on physically demanding jobs in Southern Illinois. Then he joined the Carbondale Police Department — a strong start, by his account. But while there, he encountered the Illinois State Police, and something clicked.

"I found an organization that was built different," he said.

Twenty-three years later, he leads it. The job has meant showing up for more than inspections and promotions. It has meant standing alongside officers who didn't make it home — losses he carries and doesn't publicize. It has meant navigating staffing shortages, violent crime spikes, civil unrest, and the constant pressure to hold an organization together while the world it operates in keeps shifting. Through all of it, his leadership philosophy has stayed simple: "It's the little things that are actually the biggest things." Show up when it matters. Hold the standard. Leave the place better than you found it.

He is currently pursuing a Master's degree in Public Safety Leadership through the University of Virginia, continuing to grow at the same pace he's kept since those days in Selmaville. He and his wife, Kiley — who attended Salem High School herself — have two children in high school and, he noted with a laugh near the end of the interview, they keep him honest every day.

When the conversation turned toward wrapping up, Owen made a point of redirecting. He didn't want the story to be about his rank or his record. He wanted it to be about what made those things possible.

"The most successful people in life are just good people who are there for others," he said. "It doesn't matter how much money you make. Your title doesn't matter. At the end of the day, it's what you do to help others be successful. That's true leadership." In Owen's opinion, it was the community in which he was raised, his coaches, and those hard-working and caring educators serving in our schools that enabled opportunity. We should seize every opportunity to help make someone else great, and that is what Owen witnessed in these people.

He learned that in the fields of Selmaville and within the community of Salem. He expects it daily from his Troopers across the State of Illinois, and ensures he applies it in everything he does.