BROOKINGS — It all started with a chance conversation Lori Schultz had with a customer in 1989 while cutting her hair at Schultz’s salon: They were short-staffed at the Brookings County Courthouse and really needed all the help they could get.
In November of that year, Schultz began working part time for the county, eventually going full time in November 1994 as deputy treasurer. The rest, as the old saying goes, is history.
“I cut hair for a gal that was the sister of the treasurer at the time, and she said that they were short-staffed at the courthouse and her sister was really busy and they wished they could find somebody to come work over the lunch hour,” Schultz recalled. “I said, ‘Well, I can go help her out.’ So, I went down and she said, ‘Yeah, come tomorrow and just help us out.’ So that’s how I started — just working over the lunch hour to help them out, or if somebody went on vacation.”
Now the county’s finance officer, a title she’s held since 2020, Schultz’s almost 37-year career of crunching numbers, helping with elections and keeping county commissioners informed will wrap up April 3. A day before that, on April 2, there will be a retirement party from 3:30 to 5 p.m. in the commission chambers on the third floor of the Brookings City & County Government Center, 520 Third St.
Years of change
To say that Schultz has witnessed a lot of changes over the years would be a bit of an understatement. After all, they were still using typewriters to record records when she started, and now everything is computerized. Then there was the merger of the county’s treasurer and auditor offices in 2008, when Schultz was part of the former’s staff.
“When I started, we hand-typed a lot of the vehicle registrations, and we had file cabinets for all the tax notices which, again, were hand-typed with a typewriter,” she said. “That was the big change over the years, into being computerized.”
Speaking of records, Schultz said the county’s tax records are the oldest, dating back to the late 1800s.
“We have tax books going all the way back — the real estate tax books — in the basement of the building that we’re in now,” she observed. “It’s really interesting. I went back — my dad died when I was a kid — and I could go back to our taxes when I was a kid and find where he had signed when he paid the taxes. That was kind of neat.”
Switching her focus to more modern times, Schultz said the office combination in 2008 posed challenges as well.
“That required a lot of thinking from two different directions on one thing — treasurer’s office, you approach things differently than the auditor’s office,” she said. “You can work on the same problem, but you’re coming at it from different directions. That was something that we all had to get used to.”
It helped a lot — especially since a switch to different computer programming was taking place at that time as well — that the combined office staff knew each other and got along well.
“We made the best of it … it was kind of a new thing for everybody,” she said, adding, “When I think back, it’s really crazy how we used to do things,” Schultz said.
She also recalled something else from that era, prior to the merger when she still worked at the front counter at the treasurer’s office in the courthouse: A more talkative, joking atmosphere, especially when interacting with the public.
“It was a lively atmosphere,” Schultz said. “(Now), we are just so much busier, and the girls are just — with the new motor vehicle system and they’re making sure that they’re getting everything done. People come in, and you’re trying to get them in and out where, back in the day, it took a little longer. It was just done different.”
‘A better playing field’
While she’s proud of how her and her staffers handled changing technology and transitions over the years, Schultz does have a regret or two — and, yes, they’re centered on her co-workers.
“I wish I could have gotten a better playing field for my staff. I wanted them to get recognized for the work they do and compensated fairly,” Schultz said.
She oversees an office with, including herself, eight employees — and each one of them being an expert in their area.
“I have one gal who has had a big increase in workload — I tried several years to get that position changed, and I was never able to,” Schultz said. “That’s the one thing that I will leave the office wishing I could have accomplished.”
Her seasoned co-workers allowed Schultz to focus on the bigger picture as well — ranging from dealing with the yearly regulatory changes at the state level to working with other counties and much more.
“Our office is like a puzzle. A lot of different job duties as the pieces, and if they don’t all get done, the puzzle just doesn’t work,” Schultz said.
Family’s public service
Reflecting on her decades-long work with Brookings County, Schultz recalled her family’s deep ties to the county, ones extending through several generations.
“My grandfather Edwin Cunningham was sheriff in the 1960s and my grandmother Alice became a jailer,” Schultz reminisced. “This was when the old jail was still next to the courthouse. My grandparents lived there and there was a section off the kitchen where the inmates were kept.
“I remember playing there, and we could never look behind a curtain that had a door that led to the jail area,” she continued. “It was basically an old two-story house with a section off to the west that had the cells in it.”
Schultz added that the jail office was inside the courthouse on the first floor, and that her mother worked in the courthouse in the driver’s exam station during the time that her grandfather served as the sheriff.
“Then Gordon Ribstein became sheriff and Sharon took over the same job as my grandmother, feeding the jail birds,” Schultz said. “They lived in the new jail, in an upstairs apartment. Sharon was my dad’s cousin.”
Add to that tapestry the fact that her father was a deputy sheriff for a short time in the 1960s.
“So basically, I have had a relative employed by the county since I was born,” Schultz said. “I grew up respecting the positions that the county had — they were hard to get back in the day. People wanted them — good pay, stable work — (and) once people got in, they stayed.”
Will miss, won’t miss
There are things Schultz is going to miss in retirement — and then there are the things she can’t get away from as soon as possible. Regarding the former, it’s hands-down her office staff.
“It’s going to be my employees that I’ll miss,” she emphasized. “I’ve got a lot of stories — I couldn’t pick just one out; there’s a lot of them.”
As for the latter? Simply put, it’s politics.
“Politics is ugly, whether it starts way up at the national level or all the way down to a local level,” Schultz said. “Politics is a dirty game.”
While the political winds are always blowing this way or that, they’ve really been gusty over the last decade or so.
“We did the elections by the book; we have an extremely good election staff and so those things didn’t bother me that much — I knew we were doing things correctly,” Schultz said. “It’s just the overall politics. Not the politics of an election, but the politics that you have to play to get things done.”
She finished, “There’s a lot of game playing in politics, and I don’t do so well at that. … there’s black and white, right and wrong. Politics has a lot of shades of gray to it that aren’t so pretty.”
Still, Schultz encourages people to take a stab at politics and public service, especially on the county side of the equation.
“There are really good positions, good-paying positions that come along with insurance, on the county side that people just don’t seem to be aware are elected,” Schultz said, including hers as the finance officer.
In the years to come
With her eyes on the prize of post-retirement life, Schultz is looking beyond the office and waking up to a blaring alarm clock almost every morning at 5:15 a.m.
“The No. 1 priority after retirement are my grandkids and kids. I can’t wait to spend more time with them and help out when needed,” she related. “My husband and I are going to be looking for a home in the Black Hills at some point so that we can be closer to both families.”
Also on the menu are attending Jackrabbits games when they can and taking trips as well. Oh, and let’s not forget Schultz’s cat.
“I will be content to sit in the recliner with Simon,” she said.
In closing, several commissioners shared good wishes for Schultz as she prepares to set sail into retirement.
I would like to thank Lori for her many years of service to Brookings County. Enjoy retirement and make the most of every day,” Commissioner Dave Miller said. “I will miss sharing dad jokes with her — she gives great eye rolls!”
Commissioner Larry Jensen went all the way back to a shared childhood.
“(It) seems like yesterday we were riding the school bus together. (There have) been a lot of changes over the years in Brookings County — from moving from the courthouse to the CITCO building, or the combining of treasure and auditor to the now-Finance Office,” he said. “You have been through all the changes. It is now time to enjoy your retirement.
“Congratulations. You deserve it.”
— Contact Mondell Keck at [email protected].
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