SABATTUS — Thomas Fales figured he’d be carrying a badge and a gun into his 60s. Then, a medical problem interrupted the 59-year-old Sabattus police chief’s plans.

“I thought it was going to be serious, and it really turned out to be nothing,” Fales said. “It kind of gave me the thought that, hey, I need to get out and enjoy my life with my wife, spend some time with my kids and enjoy the number of days we’ve got left on this earth.”

So, he gave his notice.

After 31 years and 11 months as a police officer — and almost 18 years as Sabattus’s chief — Fales plans to retire on Thursday.

Already, his office walls are mostly bare. Gone are the antique British bobby’s hat and the family photos. The only thing new is a clock in the corner of his computer screen, counting the days, hours, minutes and seconds until he becomes a civilian again.

It ought to have little effect on the soft-spoken man with five children and 16 grandchildren.

“We’ll do our best,” Fales said of himself and his wife, Charlene. The two have been married for 36 years. The couple plan to wander Maine this summer and camp a lot. “We’re not going to be extravagant. We like the simple things.”

It’s been a seemingly simple career. Though he rarely sought promotion, the Massachusetts native was twice promoted to chief.

He came to Maine in the mid-1960s. He graduated from the Maine Criminal Justice Academy in 1967 and took a job with the Richmond police department. Two years later, he became the chief.

Fales discovered quickly that he liked small-town police work.

He tried to portray himself as working with the people in town, rather than against them. It helped him when he had to take his budget to voters at the annual town meeting.

“It’s a pretty good form of government,” he said. When there were political fights, he tried to maintain an emotional distance. “It’s not personal. You can’t take it personally.”

When his house burned flat, he learned more.

“That’s when I learned about the character of Maine towns,” he said. People opened their wallets and offered clothes from their closets.

He stayed in Richmond for seven years. He then went to Winthrop for almost six years, before the former chief in Sabattus began calling him with an offer to serve as his lieutenant.

Fales was serving as the DARE officer at his kids’ school in Winthrop.

He finally relented when he was told could skip the night shift.

“I ran out of things I could say ‘no’ to,” he said.

Six months later, the chief left and Fales took the top job.

“I was very fortunate they put my trust in me,” he said.

In the nearly 18 years since, the town has grown a bit.

There have been some terrible crimes, but the worst incidents were usually overseen by state and federal authorities. Often, the department’s detectives have assisted.

But their focus has been on the smaller things, the modest changes in a modest town.

One obvious difference is the municipal building on Route 9, which replaced the ramshackle offices downtown.

To Fales and his department, located in the cellar, it was rough.

“There was a little brook that used to run through the basement,” he said.

The building even had a rumored ghost that so frightened one officer, he refused to go inside late at night.

When the town decided to build the new structure, Fales himself designed the initial floor plan on a computer. The plan included a daylight basement for cruisers and the community, something that seemed to symbolize Fales tenure.

He is proudest of his work to track the town’s senior citizens, creating a database of people who might need to be checked on if there were a bad storm or power outage.

“We pretty much found out where every senior lived,” he said. “We got their names. We got their phone numbers.”

It’s a chore that would be impossible for a town any larger.

“That’s why I’ve always liked working in a small town,” he said. “You have a lot more latitude in your contact with citizens. We have had a lot of good fun with the seniors.”

He trained his new officers, particularly officers who have worked in other departments, to end the “us versus them” approach that officers sometimes adopt.

“It shouldn’t be that way,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

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