Ironically, he got busted by a deputy with the Marshall County Sheriff’s Office.
Sheriff Bill Helms was with a few friends one warm, winter evening when he was a pre-teen, and there was a most packable snow that had fallen near his home along Middle Grave Creek about 4.5 miles out of Moundsville. The crew would smack each vehicle with a few of their creations and then hide from sight in case any of the drivers decided to stop. None did until
“We just thought it would be awful fun to throw some at the cars going by,” Helms revealed. “So, that’s what we did, and sure enough here came a sheriff’s deputy, and we pelted that cruiser like crazy. Then every single one of us got caught, and every single one of us got in trouble with our parents.
“Now, I did learn a valuable life lesson from that, and I never did it again; that I can tell you,” he said. “I remember it being a warmer day, too, so those snowballs were pretty heavy. We didn’t think about that, though. We just wanted to hit the cars.”
But, after more than 25 years in law enforcement, Helms has had a front-row seat to the evolution that has taken place with the structure of the average American family and the mindset of the average school student. Not only did he briefly serve as a resource officer in Marshall County, but he and his wife, Jeannette, raised two sons.
“I think today’s kids are just like we were back then because we were ornery, and today’s kids are ornery, too,” Helms said. “But the big difference is that today’s kids have a much bigger platform with the Internet and social media. If someone wants to plan something, word spreads quickly on the Internet, but when I was a kid, no one really planned anything. We just ended up meeting up.
“Nowadays, though, it’s much easier to attract a large group of people with a single post on Facebook,” he said. “I am so thankful, and I am so glad that when we grew up, we didn’t have the Internet. We got our social media by taking off in the morning after your mother made sure you were fed, and finding friends on the ball field, in the creek, or on the neighbor’s basketball court. It’s nothing like that now.”
A Guarded Situation
Helms is in his early 50s, so he realizes the multitude of changes that have taken place since the days when his mother would set him free to roam until dinner on a typical summer or weekend day. Most kids these days, though, aren’t allowed to cruise their neighborhoods or gallivant to other parts of town without adult supervision because crimes against kids are more popular now than ever before.
“Parents have trust issues with people they don’t know well,” the sheriff said, “and no one can blame them for that.”
Plus, the mental health crisis coupled with a drug epidemic during a coronavirus pandemic that isolated, separated, and worsened all of the above.
“These days, my biggest concern is for these kids and them getting sucked into the drug culture that we do have here in the Valley,” the sheriff said. “It’s easy right now for that to happen because (And I can remember when I was a kid.) you’re so impressionable and vulnerable to giving into peer pressure. You want to fit in, and you want to be liked, and if you are getting bullied, it makes it even worse.
“But I know when I was a teenager, I didn’t make real smart decisions, so that’s why I know it’s a very real possibility some of them could be tempted by drugs or something worse,” he said. “There are a lot of good things about having that access like they do, but unfortunately we have seen a lot of bad things, too.”
