Lt. Faye Spaulding: Getting it honest

As a young girl growing up in Miami, Faye never imagined she would end up in law enforcement. On the contrary, she planned to go to Hollywood and become an actress.

At 17 years old, life dealt Faye a devastating blow that turned her world upside down. Just four days before the first day of her senior year of high school, her beloved parents were killed by a drunk driver.

Faye was best friends with her mother, and according to her brother Carl, Faye is a living replica of her, in both her appearance and her heart of gold.

Like Faye, her mother was everyone's mother. She welcomed children into her home, took care of more than just her own two kids, and was always involved in Faye's school activities.

After the devastating loss, her only remaining family was her brother, who tried convincing her to live with him in Washington, where he was stationed in the military.

Faye loved her school and didn't want to leave her friends in Miami, so she opted to live with her mother's best friend, who she calls her aunt, so she could finish her senior year with friends.

Shortly after moving in with her aunt, Faye said, "she turned on me."

Her aunt, who she had been close with her entire life, didn't give Faye the motherly love she once received from her parents. Her aunt expected her to purchase her own groceries and gave a grieving Faye little to no emotional support.

"I was angry, mad at everybody," said Faye. "I just endured it until it was time for me to go off to school."

Popular among her peers, Faye relied on friends to get her through as she navigated a new and harsh reality of going through life without her beloved parents.

After high school, she decided not to go to Hollywood as she had always planned.

"I didn’t have the support system," she said.

Instead, Faye went to Bethune Cookman College in Daytona Beach with her best friend.

Faye majored in sociology and minored in criminal justice, but hadn't figured out what she wanted to do with her education upon first graduating college.

Her first internship was at the welfare office, which she quickly figured out wasn’t for her. "I didn’t want to be hemmed up in an office all day," she said.

She then completed an internship program with the Daytona Beach Police Department. "I loved it," she said.

Faye also tried her hand at teaching after college, thinking she would follow in her mother's footsteps, who was a special education teacher with a degree from University of Miami.  After Faye taught both first grade and kindergarten, she knew she wasn't cut out for the job and wanted a fresh start, so she packed up her and her son and moved to Georgia.

The year was 1995, and Faye had secured a job at the College Park Police Department, where she stayed for 10 years.

She was originally hired as a patrol officer but was promoted to investigations, marking the first promotion ever given to a black woman in the history of the College Park Police Department.

When Faye first began working in College Park, she said the five black officers she worked with would tell her how different life was for them compared to their white counterparts in the department.

The black officers told Faye they couldn't change their clothes at the station with the white officers. Instead, they had to change clothes at the nearby gas station.

"I thought it can't be true," she said, "I didn’t know I would be treated differently because I was black."

Growing up in a more diverse community, and having attended a nearly all-black high school and an all-black college, Faye hadn't yet experienced much racism in her life, so the stories she heard from her co-workers in College Park were baffling. 

"I don’t care if you're black, blue, green or purple, people are people to me. That's it," Faye said.

Faye eventually relocated to Barrow County in 2005 after former Barrow County Sheriff Joe Robinson hired her as an investigator.

The transition to Barrow County from College Park led to some culture shock for Faye, both as an investigator and a private citizen.

"The culture was just different in Barrow," she said.

Upon first moving to Barrow, Faye immersed herself in the community and its culture.

She rode on a four-wheeler for the first time and discovered she had a taste for deer meat, which she had never tried before.

"I like to embrace other people's culture," she said.

Now, 18 years later, Faye has established herself as a leader among her peers at the Sheriff's Office and is an inspiration in the community. She supervises the special investigations unit, which oversees all registered sex offenders in Barrow County, coordinates with the training unit for crisis intervention, is a SWAT team negotiator, is one of three trained peer-to-peer employees through the critical incident stress management program and oversees the “Shop with a Hero” program each year. She was the first recipient of the Star of the Community Award, presented by Move Realty in 2021, and is currently part of the Leadership Barrow Class of 2023.

In doing the work she does for the community, which requires her to work long hours and go through endless hours of training every year, Faye isn't driven by money, status or prestige. Instead, everything she does comes from her heart, and she wouldn't have it any other way - just like her mother.