When she enrolled at Nebraska Wesleyan University two and a half decades ago, Lincoln's acting police chief was sure that she did not want to follow her father's footsteps.

Michon Morrow had grown up watching her dad, James Joneson, miss holidays and birthdays and major life events on account of his varying roles in Nebraska law enforcement, which included stints as a police officer in Gothenburg, the sheriff in Dawson County, the police chief in Lexington and the head of the state's Crime Commission.

"As much as I was daddy’s little girl — and loved to get to ride in the back of his cruiser and spend time with him at the office — I did not want to go into law enforcement," Morrow said last week at the headquarters of the Police Department she now leads.

She had enrolled at Nebraska Wesleyan with the intent to go to medical school afterward, taking pre-med classes and — because she was not completely divorcing herself from her dad, she said — minoring in criminal justice.

As she worked through a sociology class in her first year at the liberal arts college, Morrow was the victim of a stalking, she said.

She filed a police report with LPD and, later, received a few letters in the mail from what is now known as the department's Victim Assistance Unit, staffed by advocates who help crime victims connect with resources while guiding them through the judicial process.

Morrow met an advocate named Joanna Svoboda and fell in love with her work, which dovetailed with a sociology class Morrow was taking at Wesleyan that required an internship.

She applied to join Svoboda's unit.

“I was 19,” Morrow said. “And I never left.”

Morrow left the civilian-staffed unit in 1997 to join the Police Department's academy class that fall, graduating in December and embarking on a 26-year career that has taken the Nebraska native through the ranks at LPD.

She was promoted to sergeant in 2006 and made captain in 2011 before she was named an acting assistant police chief in 2021 following former Police Chief Jeff Bliemeister's resignation.

Soon after Teresa Ewins arrived as Bliemeister's permanent replacement in September 2021, the West Coast native made Morrow's promotion permanent, naming her an assistant chief and the department's chief of staff.

The permanence of both appointments would prove to be short-lived.

Ewins resigned abruptly and without explanation last month. Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird tabbed Morrow as her interim replacement.

Twenty-nine years after she applied to be an intern at the city's Police Department, Morrow, now 48, has taken on the role as Lincoln's top cop with humility, being careful not to deride her predecessor and, at times, answering questions by acknowledging that she does not have all the answers.

Morrow did not apply to be the city's police chief two years ago, when Bliemeister's resignation left a vacancy that brought Ewins here from San Francisco.

She is and was a wife and a mother of two children — a role that, as Morrow learned growing up, could be tough to square with a career in law enforcement, much less a job leading a police force.

"I’ve tried very hard throughout my career to balance the two," she said. "And the scales didn’t always tip right, if I reflect back and I remember things that maybe I could have prioritized with my family and instead I picked work."

Her kids are older now. The youngest, 18, started his senior year at Southwest High School last week.

“And, with their support, I believed that I could meet the demand," Morrow said. "Because it’s a big demand, and our department needs that and our community needs that, and it’s the position that I’m in now where I believe that I can be successful for them.”

So Morrow accepted the job when Gaylor Baird offered it last month, an interim promotion that bumped her salary to $164,249 annually. Ewins, at the time of her resignation, made $187,460, city officials said.

"It has been exciting," Morrow said of her first three weeks on the job. "I would tell you probably, if I’m being perfectly honest, at moments overwhelming.

"But I only took the role because I believed that I could.”

And she's not the only one who believes it.

Marty Fehringer, the assistant chief at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Police Department who spent 32 years at LPD before joining UNL in 2021, was promoted to captain at the city's Police Department the same year as Morrow.

Their interactions before then were limited, but they leaned on one another as they joined the command staff together, Fehringer said, calling Morrow his "mutual mentor."

Fehringer pointed to Morrow's integrity, humility, empathy and passion — both for the city and its police department — as the traits that helped her quickly climb the ladder at LPD.

In doing so, he said, Morrow has ingrained herself in the community — a trait that distinguishes the 48-year-old from her predecessor, Ewins, who was the first true outsider to be tabbed to lead LPD since at least 1975.

"The Lincoln Police Department doesn't operate on an island," Fehringer said. "Everything that they do, they're involved with other community partners, depending on what kind of issues they're trying to address or help out with.

"I think just having that experience — in Lincoln — is irreplaceable, in my opinion," he said.

"Michon is very consistent," he added later. "Her passion has been unwavering the entire time that I've known her. She truly loves Lincoln. And she loves the Lincoln Police Department."

"Unwavering" is the first word that Jessica Loos used to describe Morrow, who she met more than a decade ago inside Lincoln's 911 dispatch center.

Then a dispatcher and now the manager of the city's Emergency Communications Center, Loos described the department's acting chief as a coalition-builder, insistent on ensuring that everyone has a seat at the table.

"She's always held that to be an honor that we're trusted with that responsibility of bringing public safety to our community members," Loos said. "But with that, she also has a very clear understanding that that doesn't happen behind closed doors, that doesn't happen on our own.

"It's our community members and having the conversations with them that allow us to make sure we're really meeting the expectations of what's needed."

Loos was rafting on a family vacation when news broke last month of Ewins' resignation and Morrow's subsequent promotion.

When she reached dry land and when her cellphone reception returned, she watched in tears as the messages poured in.

"Tears of joy, tears of pride just in knowing that the department — not just a facet of the department under her leadership as assistant chief — but the entire department is really going to get to be a part of who she is," Loos said. "It's not that it hadn't been, but even in a bigger way."

"I'm very excited for our relationship within the community," Loos said. "Michon has an uncanny ability — it's just who she is, that she truly in her heart of hearts, has care and concern for every citizen of Lincoln."

Brian Jackson, the department's assistant police chief who has twice served as its acting chief, is the one who promoted Morrow to an acting assistant chief role in 2021 when he manned the top job between Bliemeister's departure and Ewins' arrival.

"I think what you see, if you know Michon Morrow, is what you get," he said. "Her clock doesn't end at 4 o'clock on the day. She puts in the hours that it takes — and it takes a lot to be a manager on the Lincoln Police Department."

Morrow knows this. What she doesn't know, she says, is what the future holds.

Last month, in her first appearance in front of reporters following her promotion, Morrow laughed when asked if she expected to be named the city's next permanent police chief.

“I’m still gonna laugh," she said, facing the same question last week.

"Sorry," she said, noting that decision is up to Gaylor Baird, who introduced Morrow as "Lincoln Police Department Chief Michon Morrow" at a news conference, dropping "Acting" from her title, unintentionally or not.

Kelli Britten, the city's chief communications officer, said there is no search planned to find Ewins' permanent replacement and no timeline for when the city will decide how to move forward.

Morrow, unafraid to admit that she does not know everything, does know by now if she wants the job on a permanent basis.

But she won't say.

“I want to do what’s best for our department and our community," she said, later adding: "I’m really proud of where we’re at and where we’re going."

Photos: Teresa Ewins tenure as Lincoln police chief