Meredith Ackerman
Many students graduate from high school and never look back. However, Joseph Hughes dreamed of coming home to the red and blue halls of Grove City High School.
Hughes always wanted to be of service to others. While he explored his options, he kept an open mind to returning to his alma mater. As of fall 2025, he serves as its newest school resource officer.
“This was something I wanted to do for years. I thought I had an opportunity and needed to seize it,” Hughes says. “It’s been a big change for me, going from wearing khakis and a polo shirt to getting in uniform.”
Safety priority
Growing up, Hughes enjoyed hunting and fishing, frequenting his family’s recreational property in Athens, where he took conserving the environment to heart.
Lauren Boyd
Throughout his pastimes, Hughes witnessed the laws and regulations at play helping to preserve the very nature he cherished, even making him envision himself as a game warden one day.
After graduating high school in 2005, Hughes enrolled at Hocking College where he planned to study wildlife management.
Seeking a broader potential for job opportunities, Hughes transferred to Columbus State Community College to study police work.
In 2008, Hughes returned to his hometown, getting a job at the Grove City Division of Police.
Since joining, Hughes taught intermediate school students in the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program for three years and also occasionally supervised the high school football games and engaged with students off-duty by playing pickleball with them on a local court.
As Hughes got more involved with the school, the more he hoped for a school resource officer job opening.
“In the detective bureau, I was talking on the phone. I wasn’t seeing many people face-to-face,” Hughes says. “I’m a very social person. The job at (the high school) allows me to do work with the staff and build friendships with them."
When his predecessor announced his departure, Hughes saw it as his chance to rekindle the experience he had as a high schooler and build upon it for the generations to come.
Back to class
Lauren Boyd
Hughes was excited to return to his alma mater and reconnect with many of his former teachers. One of his favorite classes as a student was ceramics taught, by Brian Bosworth, whose classroom Hughes has stopped by on various occasions.
“We continue the relationship we always had,” Hughes says. “It’s cool because most of them only have a year or two left. This was just the right opportunity, because if I would’ve waited much longer, there would have been nobody left.”
Lauren Boyd
Some welcome changes that Hughes notices from his days in school are the accommodations students can now access, such as school-wide social workers and other support systems for mental health.
Hughes aims to bolster this positive atmosphere by chatting with students during their lunch periods and in the hallways between classes or kicking the soccer ball around at athletic events.
“Schools need a school resource officer so that kids see a good example of authority on a daily basis,” Hughes says. “I love getting to know them.”
The incoming high schoolers and the current freshman class are a part of the 4,000 students he met through DARE. Some have reintroduced themselves and shared memories from the program.
Protecting and serving the future
Looking ahead to the future, Hughes wants to teach and connect more with students.
About every other month, a teacher invites him into their classroom to give a brief lecture on law-related subjects such as constitutional amendments.
Some of Hughes’ students live with challenging pasts, so he tries to guide them in a healthier direction. They often find him in the hallways or send him an email to talk with him one-on-one.
“Usually, when somebody’s dealt with an officer and they’ve been in trouble for something, they don’t really come back to talk to that officer,” Hughes says. “I’ve had a couple specifically that came to me and we built a relationship out of it.”
A couple of Hughes’ goals for the coming years include reinstating the school’s extracurricular police club and a class about search warrants. A few students have already expressed interest in law enforcement and Hughes hopes these opportunities will nurture that curiosity.
Hughes hopes his career path can inspire students to mirror his trajectory and takes pride in advising them on how to change their lives for good.
Most of all, he eagerly awaits seeing his inaugural first-year class at its graduation and knowing he helped them get there. In the meantime, Hughes embodies a sense of neighborly service for the students.
“I give them the time to calm down and confide in me and really build those friendships,” Hughes says. “I want to be the shoulder they lean on.”
Evan Che Stefanik is an editorial assistant at CityScene Media Group. Feedback is welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com.
