Who is Jim Winder?
Jim Winder's connection to Utah runs deep. His family carries pioneer roots stretching back to the earliest days of Utah settlement, roots that include a legacy of civic leadership, religious service, and the founding of what became Utah's oldest continuously operating business, Winder Dairy. That heritage of public service and institutional stewardship is not incidental to who Jim Winder is. It is foundational.
Jim was raised in Salt Lake and spent the early decades of his career building a record of public service that has touched nearly every corner of the state. He served three terms as Sheriff of Salt Lake County, leading an organization of more than 2,000 employees responsible for the safety of 1.2 million residents and over 100 million annual visitors. During that tenure he also founded the Unified Police Department of Greater Salt Lake, Utah's first unified law enforcement agency, a nationally recognized model of efficiency, transparency, and collaborative public safety. The accomplishment required not just leadership, but the kind of institutional vision that turns competing interests into a coherent, functioning organization.
His executive credentials extend well beyond the Sheriff's Office. He has served as Chief of Investigations for the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office, overseeing more than 15,000 felony prosecutions annually and supporting over 250 prosecutors. Most recently, he served the entire state as Chief of Law Enforcement for the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands, overseeing the protection of Utah's public lands and natural resources in coordination with federal, state, and local agencies across the state. He holds specialized training from the FBI Executive Institute at Quantico and has completed international programs in anti-terrorism in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and international policing in Germany. Across every role, the pattern has been consistent, entering challenged institutions, rebuilding them with professional discipline, and leaving them stronger than he found them.
Grand County knows Jim Winder directly. When the Moab City Police Department faced a crisis threatening its very existence, Jim was asked to come and lead its recovery. He accepted. Within three years, the department had been reorganized, restabilized, and set on a professional foundation it had not previously had. He did not arrive as an outsider with a theory. He arrived as an executive with a record, and he delivered.
When the time came to step back from that role, the decision to leave was personal, like many families who have come to love this place, Jim and his wife Shawn found that raising children in a small and rapidly changing community presented real challenges that, at the time, called them elsewhere. But they never truly left. Throughout the years that followed, the Winders maintained their residence in Moab, and Jim's work with the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands kept him actively engaged with the lands, communities, and public safety challenges of the region he had come to call home. Grand County was never a chapter that closed. It remained the place they returned to, and the place they chose, deliberately and permanently, to build their future.
Jim is now a full-time resident of Grand County, committed entirely to this community and to the opportunity to serve. He brings to this race nearly 40 years of executive experience, a biography rooted in Utah's history, and a clear-eyed understanding of what this office actually requires, not just the visibility of the badge, but the discipline, preparation, and professional leadership that make a Sheriff's Office worthy of public trust.
Grand County deserves that. Jim Winder is ready to provide it.