Mark is a lifelong resident of Oregon, having been born on the beautiful Pacific Northwest coast and is now living his retired life with his lovely German wife Chris in Canby, Oregon. He attended IACIS in 1995 in Portland, Oregon when the big news was that Windows 95 had recently been announced. The basic class then included role playing where they practiced seizure of a computer system from a suspect, to prevent him from starting a destructive process. The IACIS staff used a harmless program that if started by the suspect would have mimicked formatting the hard drive. Students also pieced together and recovered the data from a 5 ¼ inch floppy drive that was cut in half. Mark received his DOS Seizure certification at that training event.
Mark joined the US Air Force in 1969 and spent almost four years stationed at Ramstein Airbase, Germany and finished service in 1974. Mark met his wife of 49 years there and they were married in Frankfurt/Main in 1973. Upon his return to civilian life, Mark served with the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Department from 1974 to 2013 as a Deputy Sheriff and Detective. He started the computer forensics unit there in 1995 in large part thanks to support from then IACIS President Tom Seipert. The unit expanded to three examiners before Mark’s first retirement in early 2002. Later that year Mark came back to the unit to work half time until fully retiring in 2013. After receiving his CFCE with IACIS in 2001 he began volunteering first as a coach, trainer and instructor, then went on to be BCFE Chairman, European Event Coordinator and Director of Marketing. Mark also worked on the Ethics committee. Mark received the coveted Lifetime Member award in 2018. After a pause following the BCFE event in 2018, Mark started volunteering for IACIS again in 2021 on the IACIS Member Finance Committee and continues in that role to this day. In 2022 Mark volunteered to work with Ken Link under the IACIS Treasurer to assist in making travel arrangements for staff members.
Many fond memories are shared with old friends at the US training events and especially at the four BCFE training events in Budenheim, Germany and five training events in Croatia. The host agencies, being coordinated by Heiko Held of the BKA in Germany and Goran Oparnica of Insig2 in Croatia, made Mark and Chris’s time there, both in class and after class, the highlights of these events.
Mark was blessed to be able to volunteer with the support of his superiors at the Sheriff’s Department. His hat is off to all the volunteers, especially those with full time jobs who take their personal time to be able to help serve their fellow members.
