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© St. Petersburg Times, published November 24, 2001
The lives of Malcolm Beard and Walter Heinrich have been vaguely synchronized. Both were colleagues in the Tampa Police Department. Beard was sent off to the FBI Academy for extra training. Heinrich soon followed. Beard got a job with the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office. Then Heinrich.
Beard became sheriff. Then he groomed Heinrich for the job. Now, both men are living out their retirements a few miles from each other in South Tampa.
Beard, 82, had a knack for high-profile busts as a Tampa detective in the late '40s and '50s. In 1957 he was elected county constable, but was out of a job within a few years when constitutional revisions eliminated his office. In 1964 he unseated Sheriff Ed Blackburn, and held the office for 14 years.
Beard was a conservative in the liberal 1970s. He wasn't big on women officers. He tussled with the National Organization for Women, and had, as he recalled, "problems with the EEOC, trying to say who you had to hire."
A Democrat, Beard was elected to the Florida House in 1978, making room for Heinrich to easily win election to sheriff. In 1980, Beard won a Senate seat, representing eastern Hillsborough County, and held it until he retired in 1996.
In 1985, Beard became a Republican and remains active in the GOP. He's supporting his Senate successor, Tom Lee, for re-election, and Charlie Crist for attorney general. This year he was appointed to the Judicial Nominating Commission for the 2nd District Court of Appeal.
He also keeps busy swimming, walking and going to the gym three days a week. He fishes on local private lakes, and is a 35-year member of the local Tuten Hunt Club. He bagged three does on a recent South Carolina excursion.
Beard shares a condo near Bayshore Boulevard with his wife, Mary Ellen, and has two kids and three grandchildren.
Heinrich, 75, joined the Tampa Police Department after serving in the Navy at the end of World War II. He steadily rose through the ranks, and by 1970 was contemplating a university teaching position in Minnesota. Beard lured him over to the Sheriff's Office by creating the Juvenile Justice Department for him to head.
Like Beard, Heinrich served 14 years as sheriff, and handpicked a popular successor from within the ranks, the current sheriff, Cal Henderson. Heinrich's highly regarded tenure was highlighted by highly sought accreditations. He retired on New Year's Day 1993 after 48 years in law enforcement.
For the next four years he served on the Commission on Law Enforcement Accreditation, and the Commission on Accreditation for Corrections. He consulted for police agencies around country, and taught law enforcement courses at Hillsborough Community College.
In 1997 his house was burglarized. "He just trashed the bedrooms and dumped everything out," said Heinrich. "That to me has to be the ultimate intrusion of one's privacy." Taken were three .38-caliber snub nose revolvers (two were later recovered), costume jewelry, and his coin collection.
Around that time Heinrich decided to retire completely. Now he reads the St. Petersburg Times and Tampa Tribune daily "from cover to cover," plus Readers Digest, Sheriff Magazine, and Police Chief. He exercises every day, lunches with his former colleagues, and remains active with his veterans group, the U.S.S. LSM/LMR National Association. He lives with his wife, Phyllis, and has three children (one of whom is Hillsborough Judge Walter R. Heinrich), and four grandchildren.
Both men credit their solid law enforcement careers to the people they worked with. "I miss my career, and I miss the men and women I worked with," said Heinrich.
"I had good people," said Beard. "Some of them I think appreciated me more after I left than they did before I was there," he said with a chuckle.
- Michael Canning can be reached at (813) 226-3408, or canning@sptimes.com.