TL;DR
The memoir of Gene Wriggelsworth, a Michigan state trooper and undercover narcotics supervisor who served seven terms as Ingham County sheriff. Written with his wife, Sandy, and a credited ghostwriter, for the family first.
A routine arrest in Lansing, Michigan, of a man carrying a couple of ounces of cocaine. That’s how it started. Gene Wriggelsworth and his narcotics squad followed it, and it led to a boat headed for Miami with two and a half tons aboard.
Stories like that fill Gene Wriggelsworth’s memoir, 50 Years of Duty. IgnitePress published it in December 2025.
What is 50 Years of Duty about?
Half a century of police work in Michigan. Wriggelsworth was a state champion wrestler at Owosso High School, class of 1963. A state police sergeant who lived next door to the girl he’d marry suggested he become a trooper, and he did.
The book opens in 1967, with a rookie trooper sent into the Detroit riot and shot at by snipers he couldn’t see. It follows him through eight years as a trooper and fourteen as undercover supervisor of a regional narcotics squad, leading raids and making buys. It covers a sniper standoff that ended with a tank in the street and a house shot to pieces, a scene he says is burned into his memory. It covers the hardest job in policing: telling a family their officer wasn’t coming home.
Then it covers his years as sheriff. When he took over the Ingham County Sheriff’s Office in 1989, he says, it was a mess. The book describes the reforms he made over seven terms, and it’s honest about what the work cost his family. It includes photographs, newspaper clippings and memorials for fallen officers.
Who is Gene Wriggelsworth?
He served 22 years with the Michigan State Police before winning election as Ingham County sheriff in 1988. He held the office from 1989 through 2016, the longest tenure in the county’s history. His son Scott succeeded him as sheriff, and the county’s training center now carries his name. He and Sandy have been married more than sixty years and have three sons.
How did a ghostwriter help Gene Wriggelsworth?
He didn’t write it alone, and the book says so. Gene wrote it with Sandy, and ghostwriter Cindy Dawn Tschosik is credited for ghostwriting and editorial guidance. The project took about two years and drew on five binders of newspaper clippings Sandy had kept.
According to local coverage, Gene doubted at first that anyone would want to read it. Tschosik won him over by pointing out that real police work is what the best television is built on. Sandy said the book was written for the family. It’s had signings at local bookstores and coverage on Lansing television.
What does 50 Years of Duty say about family?
A good deal, because the family is part of the story. Gene and Sandy have been married more than sixty years and raised three sons while he worked undercover narcotics and later ran a sheriff’s office. The book is candid about what those years asked of all of them.
The law enforcement career carried into the next generation, too. Their son Scott became Ingham County sheriff after Gene retired, and the county’s training center was named for Gene. When the book came out, the family celebrated it with signings at a bookstore in Mason and local television coverage. For a book Sandy said was written for the family first, that’s a fitting launch.
What 50 Years of Duty shows a leader planning a book
It shows exactly how most retired sheriffs’ books ought to get written. Wriggelsworth had fifty years of stories, a wife who’d saved the clippings and no wish to spend a year at a keyboard. A ghostwriter turned the interviews and binders into a book, and the cover is honest about who did what.
Most retired sheriffs have a story like his and a family that wants it written down. This one got done.
Keep reading
Hiring a ghostwriter for a sheriff’s or police chief’s book: how law enforcement leaders turn a career into a book, and what has to stay out.
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