IT’SNOT ANACT

‘Castle Rock’ crimefighter a member of Idaho sheriff’s dept.

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COTT Glenn, aka Sheriff Alan Pangborn on Hulu’s “Castle Rock,” was climbing down a steep cliff this spring in Idaho looking for human remains.

But the 79-year-old actor was not on location filming a movie or a TV show — he was doing his parttime job as a reserve deputy sheriff in Camas County, joining others searching for a 30-year-old woman who had disappeared during the winter.

“The family couldn’t find her,” Glenn says. “A bear hunter and his dog found this car at the bottom of a hundred-foot cliff near Soldier Mountain. The car wasn’t damaged. The seat belt was undone. There was no blood. It was her car that she drove off a cliff.

“We walked down this really steep cliff down to a creek bed and walked back up looking under trees for bones,” he says. “We didn’t find

anything, me and two other reserves. We stopped on the side of a hill. I used to be an open-spear fisherman and if you’re looking for fish you’re never going to see them. In an almost meditative state, you have to pick out anomalies, something out of the ordinary.

“As I was saying that, the kid with me said, ‘What’s that?’ Under a fir tree less than four yards away, we saw a skull.” Glenn pauses. “I’ve seen dead people. I’ve never seen a human skull out in the middle of the woods. The skull had to go to Boise for identification. It was the girl. Part of us felt great that her mom could get closure, but another part of me can’t get it out of my mind that it was a family skull sitting under a fir tree.”

Glenn, who played astronaut

Alan Shepard in “The Right Stuff ” and Jodie Foster’s FBI boss in “The Silence of the Lambs,” joined the deputy reserve sheriff program “five or six years ago” when he saw that Camas County sheriff Dave Sanders was short-handed after spending 74 hours evacuating homeowners from a forest fire. “I said, ‘Dave, you’re younger than I am and I could almost be your brother,’ ” Glenn says. “He had three bags under his eyes.” Glenn lives in Blaine County. “From an Idaho perspective, that’s very wealthy, welleducated and liberal,” he says. “Camas County is small, rural, not wealthy at all.” The 2010 census lists the population as 1,117. Sanders told him a reserve deputy position was a real job. Glenn offered to do it for $1 a year. “You have to get some kind of money or you’re not an employee of the state,” he says A little while passed before Sanders called him. “Then the fires broke out again. I went through all this stuff. I was duly sworn in. I was asked to carry a weapon,” Glenn says. He also had to learn to perform CPR and how to use an AED (automated external defibrillator) machine. “If you’re having a heart attack, say, I open your shirt and put paddles on your chest,” he says. The difference between playing a role like Sheriff Pangborn and doing the job in real life hit Glenn immediately. “As a cop in Camas County, you know everybody’s deepest, darkest secrets and are entrusted to keep them,” he says. “Carrying law enforcement ID connects you with those who do the same and separates you from those who don’t. There’s an implicit trust that you will serve even if means risking your life.” How does Glenn fit in his life of service with his love of acting? “Here’s my deal with Sanders,” he says. “If I don’t answer the phone when he calls, he knows I’m working or visiting my kids [in LA]. But if he calls and I pick up, I can’t say, ‘Uh, I have an important dinner.’ I have to load my rifle and go in.”