Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Melissa Day had a special request for the day she would receive a service star for working at the department for 25 years.
She wanted one of the county’s first female deputies and the woman who inspired her to pursue a law enforcement career to pin the star to her uniform.
On Jan. 7, Day got her wish.
Jan Vessell attached the service star to Day’s uniform in front of Day’s daughter, Sadye Ducheck; sister, Natasha Coutu; brother-in-law, Keith Coutu, and niece, Abby Coutu.
Day had met Vessell more than 40 years earlier.
“My sister was molested for two years by a neighbor,” said Day, 48, of Herculaneum. “Detective Sgt. Jan Vessell is the one who investigated that.
“I remembered her name. (The Sheriff’s Office) came out with a history book of the department. I recently read it. That is when I noticed the name (Vessell) in a picture with Sue Wensler as one of the first female deputies. I had no idea she was one of the first females. That is so inspirational. She is one of the first females, and she helped my sister.”
Vessell, 81, of Herculaneum became a deputy in December 1977 and worked for the Sheriff’s Office for 17 years.
“I felt really happy,” Vessell said of celebrating Day’s anniversary. “I felt like I had been recognized for what I did because someone followed me. I had hoped that I had opened some doors. When I left, there were only a couple of women.”
The Sheriff’s Office has 222 employees, including sworn officers and those in civilian positions, and 59 of those employees are women, spokesman Grant Bissell said. He said 12 of the department’s 177 sworn officers are women, and nine of the Sheriff’s Office’s 30 corrections officers, who hold civilian positions, are women.
Day said throughout her career, she has tried to support women in law enforcement.
“I still want to usher in more women,” she said. “The more women we have the less hard it will be. We are capable and able to do this job.”
Sheriff Dave Marshak said Day is a steadfast employee.
“She does an excellent job, and we are proud to have her on our team,” he said.
Natasha Coutu, 52, said she is proud of her sister.
“Her whole life, this is what she wanted to do,” Coutu said. “It was very important for me to be here.”
Inspiration
Day, who grew up in Hillsboro, said Vessell investigated a man who lived nearby and exposed himself to girls and sexually abused her sister, Natasha.
“He was a true pedophile,” Day said. “We were friends with his nieces, and he exposed himself to them. He also exposed himself to all the girls in the neighborhood.”
Day said the investigation started in 1988, when she was 10, and led to the arrest of Leslie Dale Nelson in Texas.
Court records show Nelson was charged with sexual assault in February 1989, and he pleaded guilty to the charge in June 1990. He was sentenced to four years in prison.
That case planted the seed for Day to pursue a career in law enforcement.
Day said she moved to Oklahoma after her junior year in high school to live with her father, Gordon Day. She said prior to graduating in 1995, she decided to become a police officer.
“I decided I wanted to put child molesters in jail because I love my sister very much,” she said.
Day said she moved back to Jefferson County in 1996 and while working at the Division of Youth Services and then Comtrea, which is now called Compass, she earned an associate degree in criminal justice from Jefferson College and applied to work at the Sheriff’s Office, Arnold Police Department and a department in St. Louis.
Day said she wanted to work at the Sheriff’s Office because of how Vessell and the agency helped her sister.
“They went to Texas to pick him up; they brought him back here, and he got sentenced and was taken to prison,” she said.
On duty
Day started working for the Sheriff’s Office on Jan. 1, 2001, and had a memorable first call.
“My very first call on night shift was a call about my uncle stealing beer from a gas station,” she said. “I was very embarrassed. I stayed in the car. I let my (field training officer) handle it. We went to his house after I told my FTO where he lived. No one answered.”
Day said she was assigned to road patrol for just less than five years before working in the detective bureau for three years.
She said she is proud of her time with the detective bureau because of her work investigating child abuse and domestic violence cases.
While Day was with the detective bureau, she also worked with the FBI on child pornography cases.
“I am proud of those because that is why I went into law enforcement,” she said.
Day said after working in the detective bureau, she briefly returned to road patrol before being moved to prisoner transportation, where she has been assigned for the past 17 years.
“I didn’t want to go, but they needed a female for transport,” she said. “I would have liked to stay and worked in sex crimes, but I know that takes a toll on you as well. (The change) may have saved me in the end. I have been dealing with it since I was 10 years old. It might have been a saving grace to my mind.”
Heather Ahearn, a warrant specialist with the Sheriff’s Office for 30 years, said Day is a dedicated deputy.
“I would have 10 of her,” Ahearn said. “She is one of our hardest workers.”
Connecting with Vessell
Day said she did not stay in contact with Vessell after the case involving her sister was closed.
However, she tracked Vessell down last month, finding out the former deputy lives near her.
“It was very emotional for me, and I think it was for her, too,” Day said. “She (Vessell) said she wished her husband had been there to see that we had met. Her husband encouraged her a lot to apply. He was a big promoter of her.”
Vessell said she lobbied then-Sheriff Walter “Buck” Buerger for about a year before being hired in December 1977.
“My husband (Darrell Vessell, who died in 2017) had seen in the newspaper that the Sheriff’s Department was getting a federal grant to start a traffic unit,” she said. “My husband told me to talk to Buerger and explain that it would look good to have minorities on their traffic program. (Buerger) said that made sense. He hired me. I was a housewife (before that).”
Vessell said after working in the traffic unit, she completed a three-week FBI course and learned how to collect fingerprints. She then revamped and updated the Sheriff’s Office fingerprinting collection. Then, she was promoted to sergeant and started investigating child sex crimes.
In 1992, she became a desk sergeant before working at the Jefferson County Jail, and she left the Sheriff’s Office in 1994. She then worked as a security officer, a child support enforcement field investigator for state and then for the Division of Probation and Parole.
“I have thought about the Sheriff’s Department a lot because it was a big part of my life and the first career that I had,” Vessell said.
Day said she wants to continue to foster her relationship with Vessell.
“I told her any time you want to go out give me a holler,” she said.