Jayne Griffin

I graduated from Purdue in 1984 with a bachelor's degree in criminology, criminal justice, and psychology. Breaking into law enforcement was difficult - I couldn't even get a job as a police officer in northwest Indiana despite interning with the Lake County Sheriff's Department my senior year and ranking number 3 on the police exam. I worked at the Lake County Juvenile Detention Center, first as a group supervisor supervising girls, then as head of security, and finally as a juvenile probation officer. During that time, I kept applying for federal law enforcement jobs, putting an emphasis on being in the narcotics field. It took me three years to be hired by the DEA in April 1987. I started as a diversion investigator in Chicago, then transferred to Los Angeles in May 1988. In Los Angeles, I did celebrity cases focusing on the doctors who were diverting controlled substances through excessive prescriptions. I did a lot of dilaudid cases and got the largest civil settlement on a sole proprietor at the time - a doctor who owned 30 narcotic treatment programs. I applied for five supervisory positions in 1997, and despite rumors that two offices would never hire a female supervisor, I let it be known quite loudly about that rumor. One of those diversion program managers called me back and said to reapply, assuring me I'd get the position. I never got out of the field - I stayed out there with my team, running my own cases all the way until I retired. My philosophy is that leadership isn't telling somebody what to do, but showing them how to do it. I transferred from Chicago to Los Angeles to Kansas City to Headquarters, where I was there for the plane hitting the Pentagon, the snipers, and the anthrax. After close to 2 years, they let me come to Vegas. I got married in 2006 after I arrived in Vegas. In 2019, the United States Attorney's Office gave me and my investigator Deanna Way an award - the first time in 18 years that diversion got an award instead of enforcement - because we had the largest number of civil cases in the country and brought in the most money, and we were a district office, not a division office. I retired after 33 and a half years because after COVID, I couldn't do the job the way I wanted to anymore - I couldn't be out in the field serving warrants or doing my regulatory stuff.