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Sgt. Roger Kreis and his wife, Sandra

Washington State Patrol meets PLU twofold

There’s a benign blurring of the rules that govern the separation of church and state when it comes to marriage, particularly in the case of two State Patrol officers and their wives.

The exception came to light in a recent issue of Inside/ Out, the newsletter that is published by the Washington State Patrol. The topic? The coincidence that two WSP officers—Sgt. Roger Kreis and Lt. Gale Otto—each married PLU graduates who are also Lutheran church ministers.

Kreis, a WSP evidence control officer and supervisor of the audit section of the Office of Professional Standards, is married to Sandra (Bowdish ’65), pastor of Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church in Aberdeen, Wash.

Otto, assistant District 8 commander assigned to Bremerton, Wash., is married to Janis ’77, pastor of the Key Peninsula Lutheran Church near Key Center, Wash.

Aside from the WSP connection, the women’s lives have crossed in other ways. Janis was ordained in 1989 at a church in Puyallup, Wash., while at the same time Sandra served as pastor of another Puyallup congregation. Janis served five years as interim pastor of several Northwest congregations, one of which was the same Our Saviour’s Church in Aberdeen. There, she preceded Sandra in the ministry. Both women also received master of divinity degrees from Pacific Lutheran Seminary in Berkeley, Calif.

The Kreis’ children are following their parents’ career paths. Daughter Joanna ’97 serves as a church youth director in Tacoma. Their son, Jacob, a Washington State University graduate, is a Pierce County sheriff ’s deputy.