AFTER 30 YEARS, CAPE MAN TURNS IN FBI BADGE

Going to work every day for the Federal Bureau of Investigation was never a chore for Pat Gorham. But after 30 years, he'd rather spend his days now with a dog."He keeps me company," said Gorham, who got an 11-month old German Shepherd named Major shortly after he retired from his career as a special agent this fall.

Gorham didn't mind the company he kept at work, with attorneys and other law enforcement officers. At 55, he still had two more years to go before the FBI's mandatory retirement age. Nevertheless, Gorham decided that he had fought enough crime."I just didn't have the energy to do it anymore," he said. "Besides, I wanted to get rid of the unpredictability and have my weekends to myself."Gorham has been busy most weekends since September 22, 1969, when he began working for the FBI in New Orleans.

To get to that point, Gorham became an exception to the rules. In spite of growing up with an Air Force father and having been an Army first lieutenant himself, he wasn't the FBI's ideal. Agents hired then were almost exclusively accountants or lawyers, he said. But changes in 1969 for federal bombing laws created a need to hire and train 400 new agents quickly. Gorham became one of those agents. Gorham's interest in the FBI was not built on childhood dreams, he said. It was a pragmatic decision based on conversations with an agent in Fort Riley, Kan.

The work seemed interesting, and the pay was attractive, he said."It wasn't the kind of job where you spend all day in an office," he said. "You have to get out and meet people."From his first assignment, Gorham was moved into the position of resident agent in Lake Charles, La., where he was in charge of several counties. In 1971 he came to St. Louis, and after two months he was transferred again to Cape Girardeau. He never left.

For an agent to spend 28 years in one city is rare."I enjoyed it here and had no desire to go elsewhere," Gorham said.

If he hadn't been graded highly in annual performance reviews, the bureau wouldn't have let him stay in Cape Girardeau, he said.

Gorham was assigned Scott County along with five others south to the Arkansas state line. No types of crime were more interesting or difficult to investigate than any others for Gorham."Different people have different approaches to tackling a case," he said. "You have to investigate one case at a time."Gorham was assigned to just one case for almost two and a half years in the early 1980s. It involved tax evasion and drug trafficking by former Circuit Court Judge Lloyd G. Briggs of Sikeston, his wife, Juanita, and their two sons. All four family members were convicted on various charges in Gorham's investigation, which resulted in 11 grand jury indictments.

This was a rewarding case, since it resulted in several indictments, convictions and the recovery of large amounts of cocaine, marijuana and Quaaludes, he said.

At other times, Gorham worked on 30 to 35 cases simultaneously.

Since the early 1970s, the FBI has been more selective in the criminal activities it pursues. "You don't want to waste time on cases that aren't going to get prosecuted," he said. "If someone has two or three convictions, it's more likely that someone will take an interest."Property crimes, fugitive work and car thefts made up most of Gorham's early cases. At that point, property crimes of $5,000 or more would be considered for investigation. Now, he said, it must be $50,000 or more."We've gone more toward organized theft rings," he said. "That's the way our work has changed through the years."The rise of methamphetamine has not significantly increased the FBI's work here. One agent assigned to Cape Girardeau does investigate drugs, but most is handled by the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Southeast Missouri Drug Task Force, Gorham said.

Crimes that have received greater attention involve medical fraud. Over the past five years, Gorham has investigated more and more health care providers who are billing the federal government for services supposedly given to the poor and elderly.

The cases Gorham least enjoyed were civil rights complaints, involving prisoners alleging mistreatment in jails. "Most of them are unfounded," he said. "But they had to be done."Of the 250 federal statues the FBI enforces, only a handful are applied in any region. Since certain crimes are more prevalent in a given area, agents become more familiar with particular statues, Gorham said. "A lot of them don't apply here," he said. "Crimes on Indian reservations is one example."Gorham wouldn't claim expertise in any particular type of crime. As for high tech law enforcement, that is left to the FBI's St. Louis office, he said."If we need to tap a phone, we have telephone listening devices here that we can use," he said. "But that's about it."Gorham recalled one instance when a truck driver with several rigs and a manager of a convenience store had schemed to bypass gas pumps without recording sales. After justifying the need for electronic surveillance to the U.S. Attorney's office, Gorham was able to have video equipment sent down with a St. Louis agent to make recordings of the truck driver's activities.

Although the particulars of most cases that Gorham worked remain secret, he allows himself to be a public figure. His phone number is listed, and he can walk into most any restaurant in Southeast Missouri and be recognized, he said."Down here, I figured I'm one person for six counties," Gorham said. "I always wanted people to be able to get ahold of me."Now Gorham is attempting to be more recognizable on the golf course. He finally has more time for his favorite game, his wife, Gayle, and his dog.

Major, who Gorham adopted from the Humane Society after he retired in September, might take as much energy as crime fighting."I'm not tired of him yet," Gorham said. "But he sure wears me out."