Many of the cases he prosecutes as Allen County’s new assistant attorney may seem a little pedestrian to Chris Phelan.
Not so long ago Phelan, 36, was part of a two-man Coast Guard advisory team dropped into the South American jungles of Bolivia and Peru by helicopter to help with drug interdiction.
One time, he recalled, he and his mate were paddling a blow-up rubber boat down a river similar to the Neosho, advising a heavily armed Bolivian force of 15, when they happened onto a cocaine lab.
A single “technician” was cooking drugs and realized immediately resistance was folly. While Phelan watched, the Bolivians arrested the man and torched the lab.
“It was an exciting time,” said Phelan, who joined Allen County Attorney Wade Bowie to fight crime locally about five weeks ago.
PHELAN was born in New York and moved to Kansas City as a child.
After graduating from Went-worth Military Academy in Lexington, Mo., Phelan won appointment to the Coast Guard Academy.
The first two years of his five-year active duty obligation were spent on a cutter patrolling Atlantic waters near Charleston, S.C. The last three were an attachment to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in South America.
He learned fluent Spanish and then spent time in primitive areas of the Andes foothills, training Peruvian and Bolivian forces in law enforcement techniques and how to root out and eliminate drug operations.
After active duty, graduation from the University of Kansas Law School came in 2004 and was followed by another interesting phase of his career, working 2½ years as a clerk for Wesley Brown, well-known federal district judge in Wichita. Brown, today at 104, still hears cases, though not as many as a few years ago, Phelan said.
Next up was civil litigation with a Kansas City firm and then, as a reservist, Phelan was recalled to active duty for a year to work in international port security in Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
Mainly, Phelan said, that duty was to observe and record port practices so risks could be identified with cargo and ships coming from places with less than satisfactory security. His and others’ observations sometimes led to interception of ships in coastal waters for cargo examination before they made port in the United States.
Still in the reserves, Phelan has duty one weekend a month that he does from home — now in Iola — and will spend two weeks later this year observing what occurs in Bangladesh ports.
PHELAN’S role in Allen County is to aid Bowie with prosecutions, particularly those involving traffic and juveniles.
“I like Iola a lot,” he said. “Wade and I hit it off well from the start. We graduated from law school the same year and he has been a great resource in criminal prosecution for me.”
Phelan and wife Wendy have a daughter, Lily, 6, and a son, Chris, eight months old. They moved into a home here last weekend.
“We really like Iola,” he added. “It’s a benefit to raise kids in a small community. And it’s close enough to Kansas City for us to see our families often.”
