The Good Life Magazine – September-October 2023

LOCAL HERO | BILL AHLFELDT
I applied for it, got it, and made a really good friend and
mentor there, who I am still in touch with. He’s a retired
trooper and such a great example of an officer and how
they can communicate and de-escalate, and he’s just a
very, very good person. And a good officer. I learned a
lot from him as a whole.”
With every summer internship, however, once those
leaves turn brown, the work must come to an end.
“I just got engaged to my wife, and we had this big
plan that I was going to be a North Dakota Highway
Patrolman,” he said. “And she was going to be a college
professor; that was her dream, and we would settle in
North Dakota.”
But of course, life always has ways of throwing a wrench
into plans.
“I applied for a full-time job (with the North Dakota
Highway Department), but I didn’t get it,” he said. “So
I just started applying everywhere. I knew I wanted
to be a police officer after Tom McDonald’s class and
after doing my internship with the Highway Patrol. So I
applied everywhere. I applied to Fargo; I applied to the
Minnesota Highway Patrol, Bismarck PD, I think I filled
an application out to South Dakota Patrol, Nebraska
Highway Patrol, Border Patrol, Montana Highway
Patrol, and the first to pick me up was the Border
Patrol.”
After a discussion with his wife, they decided moving
far from home was not the choice for them or their
new marriage, and he turned down the border patrol
position.
The next offer came from the Montana Highway Patrol.
He packed his bags and set out for a 17-week training
academy in Helena, MT.
“I didn’t get to see my wife for quite a while, it was 800
miles (from Fargo to Helena) I think,” he said. “We were
only married three months at that time.”
With three weeks left in the Montana Highway Patrol
academy, Ahlfeldt’s wife was offered a scholarship for a
Ph.D. at NDSU in her field of study.
“So we had to make another very important life
decision,” he said.
32 | THE GOOD LIFE