Detective dedicated to family, work, community

HUNTINGTON -- It's Cabell Midland High School's Homecoming, and Huntington Police Det. Cass McMillian couldn't be prouder to walk his 18-year-old son, Cass Jr., onto the football field for his senior year.

But as the players and parents leave the field and before the second half starts, McMillian is called out to yet another drug overdose case on the streets of Huntington.

"At least I got to walk with him out on the field," he said. "We're subject 24 hours a day and seven days a week to be on-call.

"At first, it was difficult for my family to understand why I had to leave in a split second's notice, but now they understand how my job works and what it consists of."

Many others may wonder how the job works for the six-year detective, who now focuses on violent crimes and homicides, or how he balances that with his family and heavy involvement in the community.

"This was always something that I wanted to do as a kid," he said. "Everybody that I was exposed to was law enforcement officers, and those were the people I looked up to as role models."

After starting out as a dispatcher for the West Virginia State Police, he was hired in 1993 as a midnight patrol officer at the Huntington Police Department. Starting around 2001, he spent three years as a traffic investigator and a radar enforcement officer. From there, he went into investigations with families and juveniles, then finally transitioning into homicide and violent crimes.

"It was something that I was determined to do," McMillian said. "The mental part was going through the police academy, and the physical part was the fitness. The academy is based on military guidelines."

Just as the academy has its guidelines, so do the hours on the job, which McMillian said take a toll as far as family and personal life.

"I think it's tougher on the family trying to adjust and do things because they depend on you to be there as far as sporting and youth events," he said. "In some cases, it may just be a couple of hours, but others can last all night."

McMillian has two sons: Cass Jr. and 13-year-old Joshua McMillian, who is in the eighth grade at Barboursville Middle School.

The unpredictable hours on the job, McMillian said, don't stop him from being involved in his community.

"It goes back to my kids," he said. "I want to be a role model for other kids as well and hopefully keep them on a straight path and show them there's more to do out there than getting into trouble with drugs and alcohol. The activities I'm involved in are things that I'm interested in."

McMillian is president of the Cabell County Fair, a member of the West Virginia Farm Bureau, a member of the Gold Star Lodge 65, and active with the Cabell Midland Future Farmers of America.

"I like putting the pieces to the puzzle together to make an apprehension and solve the case," he said. "Also giving the families closure because it's pretty tough at times telling people that someone died. The hardest part is notifying the parents."

McMillian said that a recent highlight was notifying Philip Sirmons' mother, who lives in Detroit, that police had captured a suspect in Ohio in connection with her son's death.

"His mother had faith in us, and she said she was glad that it happened in Huntington because had it happened in Detroit, they wouldn't have found him," he said.

Another memorable moment for McMillian was the 2006 homicide of D.J. Wilson that happened in the parking garage behind Jim's Steak and Spaghetti House.

"I think that was the only case in Cabell County that two murder convictions were obtained without a body," McMillian said.