The Roanoke Times | File 2010

Roanoke County Police Chief Ray Lavinder

Roanoke County Police Chief Ray Lavinder, the dean of the region's law enforcement, said he will retire after a 39-year career that included the creation of the county police department and a landscape that changed from rural to suburban.

Lavinder, 65, said Friday that he will leave Nov. 1. He's been chief for 14 years and oversaw the creation of a police academy and the school officer program. He admitted he won't see some projects to completion.

"Look at my age. Look at my face," Lavinder said with a laugh in his office. "It's time to go."

Assistant Police Chief Terrell Holbrook, 53, will become acting police chief when Lavinder leaves, said County Administrator Clay Goodman, the chief's boss. Holbrook is a 31-year veteran of the department.

The county has begun recruiting for a permanent chief and will form a selection committee to screen candidates, Goodman said. The process will take four to six months, he said.

Lavinder is the longest-serving chief in the Roanoke and New River valleys. He started patrolling the streets of Arlington County in 1972, after graduating from Virginia Commonwealth University, where he studied social science education, and in 1979 moved to the Roanoke County Sheriff's Office.

One of his biggest public successes is one of his most recent. Officers searched day and night for 12-year-old Brittany Smith, who went missing in December after her mother was found slain in their house. After seven days of searching, Lavinder's investigators flew to San Francisco to pick her up and arrest Jeffrey Easley, her mother's live-in boyfriend.

As many as half of the department's 132 uniformed officers helped in the hunt and Lavinder said he warily slept three hours per night. Lavinder, solemn and self-effacing, spoke to reporters each day, appealing for Brittany's safe return. A San Francisco store clerk recognized the girl from a newscast and called police.

"Whether I wanted to be or not, I was the public face of the Roanoke County Police Department," Lavinder said.

Lavinder ascended ranks through the sheriff's office investigations division, where he was a skillful interrogator, said Sheriff Mike Winston, who worked with him in the 1980s.

"He's a smart guy," Winston said. "He could get the job done whether it was talking to somebody or putting handcuffs on them."

Roanoke Police Chief Chris Perkins said, "It's going to be hard for Roanoke County to replace him."

When Roanoke County created the police department in 1990, Lavinder was among many who transferred from the sheriff's office. That year he became captain overseeing criminal investigations, and in 1997 he was named chief.

Under his watch, the department built a firearms range, organized its police academy, was accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies and formed a crisis intervention team for mentally ill people, his spokeswoman said. He was president of the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police from 2007 to 2008.

Like other government agencies, the police department's resources have diminished since 2008. It now has eight vacancies, including one for an assistant chief who retired in 2010. The department used school resource officers for a summer construction project at the police academy.

Lavinder said he plans to spend his final weeks in office finishing  a shooting range and preparing a new session of the police academy. He was interviewing six prospective recruits on Friday.

"Everyone is working their best to fill these deficiencies," Lavinder said. "They feel their duty rises above the salary."

Lavinder said in January 2008 that he wanted to retire that year, but took his words back weeks later after meeting privately with the county board of supervisors, including Chairman Butch Church of Catawba.

"We didn't feel like he was ready to retire," Church said. "If he had been ready, he would have retired."