Around 40 people attended a wide-ranging public safety forum April 17 at Vashon High School that covered drug use, possible budget cuts at the sheriff’s office and safety trends on the island.
The forum, hosted by the Vashon-Maury Community Council and introduced by islander Celina Yarkin, included panelists Sarah Sullivan, an island social worker and emergency services worker at Harborview Medical Center; Tom Walsten, the substance use disorder clinical supervisor at Vashon Youth and Family Services; Tanner Yelkin, a store manager at Vashon Thriftway; Jim Hunziker, a nurse practitioner who works with homeless and unhoused islanders; and King County Sheriff’s officers Sergeant Theresa Schrimpsher and Major Koby Hamill.
Incoming Vashon HouseHold Executive Director Amy Drayer moderated the discussion.
Trends over time
Data and anecdotes from the panelists painted a picture of what’s changed — or hasn’t — on Vashon.
Hunziker said he’s worked with unhoused islanders since about 2005. “Over that time period it has gotten … much better,” he said, thanks in large part to improvements in health insurance accessibility through the Affordable Care Act.
Walsten said that VYFS — and his own work — has grown tremendously since he came on six years ago — and recovery groups are becoming more popular on the island. “Recovery can be kind of contagious among peer groups, and that’s been a real gift and real blessing.”
Sullivan said Vashon shares many obstacles as the city: Access to substances, lack of affordable housing and challenges connecting people to services. But Vashon has had creative success with programs like Mobile Integrated Health through Vashon Island Fire & Rescue, DispatchHealth urgent care, VARSA and VYFS, she said — and the island could better reach those who don’t know about or struggle to access those services.
Asked about trends in loss prevention at Thriftway, Yelkin said the pandemic was “a hard time for everyone,” including for shoplifting at the island grocery store. “With the work we’ve done, it is trending a little bit down. … What’s important to me is that our response to it and our prevention of it is done in the safest way possible.”
He cited a recent interaction with someone walking out with a burrito without paying for the food item. “I’ll buy the burrito for you; I just can’t have you shoplift, because I’ll have to call the cops,” Yelkin recalled saying.
It worked, Yelkin said: The person turned around and said “I can pay for the burrito.” That out-of-the-box approach won’t work all the time, he said, but “it was a good moment.”
From the sheriff’s office (KCSO), Hamill is the precinct commander, and Schrimpsher is the administrative sergeant, for southwest King County — including Vashon, Whiter Center and Skyway. Statistics they shared for reported criminal incidents on Vashon showed the island continues to experience consistently low crime relative to the rest of the county. (See table.)
“Over the last five years of crime out here on Vashon Island … happily, I think I can say that not much has changed,” Hamill said.
data
Sheriff Q&A
Islanders posed several questions to the sheriff’s office representatives — here’s how they responded.
Q: Does the King County Sheriff’s Office coordinate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)?
A (Koby Hamill): “We don’t coordinate with ICE. … We do work with the FBI and DEA. … The federal government may do investigations … or call for help, and we’re going to send officers to make sure everybody’s safe. But we don’t work cooperatively when it comes to any kind of immigration investigation.”
Q: What is KCSO doing about well-known, frequently reported drug dealers or nuisance properties?
A (Koby Hamill): “We have one team of detectives that focuses on narcotics investigations. Luckily, that team is assigned to my precinct. They have taken hundreds of pounds of narcotics off the road just last year alone. They’re working as hard as they can. … I will tell you this: The detective team has been to Vashon Island. They’re very well aware of locations here. … There are active investigations involving Vashon Island.”
Q: Will proposed budget cuts affect KCSO staffing on Vashon?
A (Koby Hamill): “Here on Vashon, you have two dedicated deputies 24 hours per day. … We’re (currently) facing a very significant budget crisis in King County that affects the sheriff’s office. We have been targeted for a $30.2 million cut over the 2026-2027 biennium.. … Unfortunately, we’re looking at some pretty significant cuts … (But) I will continue to fight … to make sure that you always have two deputies out here. There has been no talk whatsoever, nothing, of reducing the staffing on Vashon Island.”
Q: There’s a perception among some islanders that the deputies here aren’t very proactive or visible on the island. Can that change?
A (Koby Hamill): “Your up-and-coming deputies now grew up during COVID, when we were like everybody else: Responding to emergent calls, taking a lot of cases over the phone. … We brought a lot of deputies on during that period, so they grew up not knowing anything different than just taking calls over the phone and not having a lot of interaction with the public. … We’re trying to encourage our deputies to be out there and be visible and proactive.”
Q: When should I call the police for crimes at a business, like thefts? Will they show up?
A (Koby Hamill): “We rank our calls on priority levels, and nonviolent shop lifts and trespasses fall pretty low on our priority scale. But I still encourage you to call. That’s how we can track what’s going on. … If we can come, we’ll try to come.”
Q: Does KCSO have a coordinated plan for working with the Seattle Indian Health Board, which plans to operate a drug treatment and recovery facility on Vashon?
A (Koby Hamill): “I’ve talked with the Seattle Indian Health Board director. … I told them, if they needed our assistance, like any of you, they would call 911 and we’re going to come out and help them just the same. … I’ve worked in the city of Burien for many years, and they’ve had several facilities … that dealt specifically with alcohol and drug abuse treatment. We didn’t get a lot of calls there when I was there. Generally, people are there because they want to be there. … Over 16 years of being in this precinct, it’s just a handful of times that we’ve had a problem in some of those places.”
King County Sheriff’s officers Sergeant Theresa Schrimpsher and Major Koby Hamill. (Alex Bruell photo)
Alcohol and other drugs
Repeatedly, panelists emphasized the power of peer pressure — for good and ill — around drug use and recovery. Fentanyl, the extremely powerful synthetic opioid that has rapidly risen in popularity due to its cheap production cost, is easy to cut into other drugs, they said.
“You might want to smoke a joint,” Walsten said. “It might be laced with fentanyl. You have no idea. … Just pass, unless you know you know exactly where it’s from. It’s killing people on our island, and a lot of other places.”
A 2023 study from the International Society of Addiction Journal Editors found that, on average, around 15% of methamphetamine and cocaine samples sent to a drug checking service also contained fentanyl — odds of nearly 1 in 6.
“You gotta be an involved parent, folks,” Hamill said. “When the fentanyl crisis came out … I had to sit down with my son and say, ‘Listen, don’t take anything from anyone. If you need Tylenol, you need Advil, you come home and get what you need.’ … It’s terrifying. It’s traumatizing. It breaks my heart to have to talk to a parent and tell them that their baby is gone. … Knowing who they’re hanging out with, and knowing who they’re talking to is very important.”
Role-modeling is also important, Sullivan said. “If we normalize drug and alcohol use at home, how are we going to expect our children [to behave differently]?”
And research is showing that it’s best to focus on all the better things kids can do with their lives — and with their friends — than drugs, she said. “We normalize healthy sports, healthy relationships, all these other things that they can do instead, we make that the focus, instead of ‘don’t do this.’”
“There’s a lot of opportunities for sports (and) art, but there is a lack of things to do on the island,” Sullivan said. “I think once kids tend to reach high school, oftentimes they start using substances. My sense is sometimes that’s a little more permissive on Vashon, because there’s not as much to do, potentially. I don’t think that’s true for everyone, but I work with adolescents. They tell me that this is the case. I think it’s important that we offer other opportunities for them to be engaged and feel welcome.”
So too, she said, should families normalize recovery and honesty about addiction. “Maybe we don’t disclose everything to our children, but [consider] saying, ‘Hey, this is a problem in our family. This is our genetic predisposition.’ We need to address those issues with our children to make sure they know it is a disease and it can happen to you.”
Don’t forget alcohol either, the panelists said — which still kills heaps of people through poisoning, motor collisions and co-toxicity with other drugs, and contributes to familial and social stress.
But here’s some good news: “Recovery is addictive,” Walsten said.
“This is what an alcohol and addict looks like,” Walsten told the audience. “It just so happens I haven’t had a drink in the last 34 years. … If your friends see you getting into recovery, changing your behavior and … appearing happy and content, they’re going to want that too. People will follow a leader.”
Help is available.
• In an emergency, call 911.
• For the sheriff’s office non-emergency line, call 206-296-3311.
• For services for those struggling with mental health, call 988.
• For help finding more community resources, call 211.
• Many groups exist to support islanders facing addiction, mental health challenges or abusive relationships. Call Vashon Youth and Family Services at 206-463-5511, VARSA at 206-567-2647, or The DOVE Project at 206-462-0911.
• Vashon Island Fire & Rescue’s Mobile Integrated Health can provide Narcan, a medicine that can rapidly reverse an opioid overdose, and fentanyl test strips.
The King County crisis line, for those experiencing a mental health or drug/alcohol related crisis, is 988. For those who already have a counselor or social worker, it’s best to call those figures first — unless the person is in an acute crisis and is an imminent threat to themselves or others, said Sullivan, in which case you should call 911. The county can use the Involuntary Treatment Act to temporarily take someone for psychiatric monitoring and evaluation in an emergency.
This table shows the number of reported incidents of various crimes on Vashon, as well as the total number of calls for service, per year, as reported by the King County Sheriff’s Office during the April 17 forum. (A previous version of this table misidentified “residential burglaries in progress” as simply “burglaries in progress.”)
