New Safety Services Director Kim Mager busy with job and promotion of her book
There’s only one thing that concerns Rick Ewing about the person he hired as Ashland University’s new director of Safety Services.
“I hope she doesn’t become too famous, and I lose her,” said Ewing, AU’s vice president of Facilities, half joking and half serious.
Kim Mager, who replaced longtime Safety Services Director Dave McLaughlin this summer after he retired, recently published a book that is on sale at the Campus Store, other locations and online; has appeared on a number of podcasts and other media outlets, including Fox News, to talk about her book; and was on television in November in a “20/20” segment because of her book.
Not many people at AU initially knew all this about its new Safety Services director, but word is getting around, Mager said.
“I actually had a criminal justice student come up to me the other day and said, ‘I heard you interviewed this guy and asked if I could sign his book.’ I said, “I absolutely will’,” Mager said.
The guy that student was referring to was convicted serial killer Shawn Grate, whose photo is on the top of the cover of Mager’s book, “A Hunger to Kill.”
As a detective with the Ashland Police Department, Mager helped bring about the conviction of serial killer Grate in 2018 after he was captured in 2016 from a vacant city house where he was keeping a woman who had escaped and called 9-1-1.
“The book was just being launched when I started here, so I didn’t do a typical book launch because I just started my new job,” Mager said. “I said ‘I have a new job and that has to come first so, if you need to interview me, it has to be at night or on the weekend.’
“The publisher has been very understanding about that,” added Mager, who has been asked to go to several states for interviews but has instead done them all by phone, Zoom and other ways remotely.
Teamwork has always been important to Mager
Ewing appreciates Mager making her new job top priority.
“She’s hit the ground running and is doing some great things,” Ewing said. “She’s learning a lot because there are aspects of the job she’s obviously not familiar with, but she’s picking it up and has a great team.”
Her team includes campus officers, dispatchers and an operations manager, as well as the Mail Center supervisor.
“We work a 24/7 operation answering the phone and doing security checks,” Mager said. “We’re even here on holidays when everyone is home. I’m impressed with how hard the people on my team work.”
It reminds her of how hard everyone involved with the Grate case worked.
“I’m super proud of how the community handled it,” she said. “I did a presentation to about 600 people in another state on this case – law enforcement officers, prosecutors and FBI agents – and to hear them say, ‘Wow, Ashland got it right,’ was very satisfying.”
Persistence has been key in her career
Reviews of her book have been just as favorable. Online at Amazon, where the book also is for sale, it is described as “a fascinating and profoundly chilling account of how Detective Kim Mager, a real-life version of Clarice Starling, closed in on—and broke—one of Ohio’s most infamous serial killers, Shawn Grate.”
Starling is a fictional character, FBI agent and protagonist in the novel and movie, “The Silence of the Lambs,” who interviews serial killer Hannibal Lecter in a mental institution with the hopes of trying to get into the mind of another serial killer who is on the loose.
During her first of eight one-on-one interviews with Grate, Mager thought she was just interviewing another sex offender, one of many from her 27 years with the Ashland Police Department. She said things eventually changed when he started talking about “a hunger to kill” and she eventually got him to confess to killing five women in Ohio.
Her persistence not only paid off with his confession but also him being sentenced to death, which is scheduled for 2025. He is on death row in Chillicothe.
Mager is going about her new job with the same persistence, systematically going through every building to familiarize herself with the campus.
Even though she was already familiar with the campus being a 1991 graduate, a lot has changed since she studied criminal justice at AU. The campus has gone through several beautification updates.
“I’m trying to balance what I have to do in the office with what I have to learn about campus,” Mager said. “I want the officers to be visible and approachable. I don’t want people’s first meeting with an officer to be because something happened. I want us to build relationships with students and staff, so they will be comfortable with us. That’s super important to me.”
Mager values meaningful relationships
So far, Mager said students and employees have been warm and welcoming to her.
That includes Campus Store Director Amanda Brown, who asked for Mager’s permission before starting to sell her books.
“With Kim settling into her new role, I didn’t want to publicize that she worked here to avoid people bombarding her when she was trying to work,” said Brown, who added that it has been good for the community to have a local source to purchase the book.
Brown waited until Mager had been in her new job for a while before having her do a book signing, which she did on Sept. 21. After giving a short reading and doing a question-and-answer session in the Eagles Nest, Mager transitioned into the Campus Store for the book signing.
Initially, Mager said she wasn’t going to write a book and turned down many opportunities to do so. However, the way the victims were being portrayed in the media changed her mind.
“I felt it wasn’t accurate and wasn’t giving them their full value,” Mager said. “I thought, ‘I’m going to tell the story from my vantage point and tell it correctly.’ ”
Being a helping hand has played a significant role in her life
In addition to trying to help victims with her book, Mager has opened a fund (the Mager Impact Fund) at the Ashland County Community Foundation to help improve mental health and youth causes, which she has made a career of doing.
After securing an agent for her book, Mager came in contact with Lisa Pulitzer, a New York Times best-selling author of non-fiction, mostly crime, to co-author the book with her. Pulitzer visited Mager several years ago to get a pulse on the area.
“We connected right away,” Mager said. “I can see why she is so successful with writing. Immersing herself here says a lot about her. I was definitely in good hands with her.”
Likewise, Mager said she feels she is in good hands working at her alma mater. And, she wants the campus she loves to feel in good hands with her and her staff.
“I’m impressed from top to bottom with the mission of the university,” Mager said. “It’s not just words. People are true to the mission. I’ve watched employee interactions with students where the students are embraced and lifted up. I’ve had conversations with employees as I’ve walked through the buildings and I can see it’s a shared vision.
“The timing to work here couldn’t be more perfect,” Mager added. “With President (Jon Parrish) Peede in place, the vision for Ashland University couldn’t be clearer, and I see amazing progress on the horizon.”
