Former ISU football player is new Charles City Police Officer

By Thomas Nelson, tnelson@charlescitypress.com

Nathan Cork came to Charles City from Illinois to be a full-time police officer.

Being a police officer has always been an interest of Cork, but he didn’t pursue it as a career until recently.

“I haven’t looked back since,” Cork said.

A former Iowa State Cyclone football player as an outside linebacker — as well as a train conductor — Cork was born in Mason City and spent part of his childhood in Clear Lake.

He spent a large portion of that childhood moving around with his family, because his father worked on trains.

Cork played football and baseball at North Iowa Area Community College in Mason City, until the college cut the football program in 2010. After going to NIACC he transferred to Iowa State University.

“I actually walked on Iowa State for football,” Cork said.

After two years at ISU, Cork graduated with a degree in liberal arts and sciences, and started working for Union Pacific Railroad.

“I was a conductor,” Cork said. “When you get there you realize that the conductor is not the guy that drives the train. It’s the engineer that drives the train. You get sadly mistaken.”

While Cork was interested in law enforcement, he was on different career path for awhile.

“You try things your parents do,” Cork said. “You gotta find out what you don’t want to do, to find out what you want to do.”

In 2015 Cork started pursuing jobs in law enforcement, and did ride-alongs with state police officers.

Cork did five or six ride-alongs in Illinois and those experiences influenced his decisions on where to practice law enforcement.

“The ride-alongs were what made me not want not to do the state trooper side of things,” Cork said. “It’s different police work.”

Cork prefers working in a police department, as opposed to being a trooper, because he can dive in to a community, he said.

“One of my buddies back in Mason called me and said, ‘Hey, they’re hiring over in Charles City,'” Cork said.

Cork decided to head back to his roots in Iowa.

He came to Charles City on Sunday, March 26, and started working with the Charles City Police Department Monday, March 27, he said.

“Right now, I’m just learning everything,” Cork said. “I’ll be in field training in the months prior to the academy.”

During Cork’s field training he’ll learn codes, laws and rules for being a police officer prior to attending the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy, he said. He’ll shadow Charles City police officers and learn every aspect of the job.

This isn’t Cork’s first time in Charles City. He’s been here off and on while going to NIACC and living in Clear Lake, he said.

“It’s a nice community,” Cork said. “It’s a good place… to settle down and start a family.”