Sheriff privately owns building, RV donated to his office
Docs submitted to FBI: foundation bought nearly $400k in boats, ATVs, jet skis & a building & told IRS it donated them to Curry Cty Sheriff's Office. County didn't ever receive them.
Google Earth image of the property of Curry County Sheriff John Ward, with a storage building purchased by the John G. Atkins Foundation on the left
Curry County Sheriff John Ward, embroiled in a Federal Bureau of Investigations probe first reported in May by Oregon Roundup Foundation, received a new storage building on his personal property and a 27-foot travel trailer titled in his name from a non-profit foundation that told the Internal Revenue Service it made those and other donations to the Curry County Sheriff’s Office, not to Ward personally, according to foundation records newly obtained by ORF.
The Brookings-based John G. Atkins Foundation was seeded with highly valuable United Parcel Service stock owned by the Foundation’s namesake during his life, according to Foundation manager and Certified Public Accountant Rory Smith in a May interview. Smith said the Foundation’s purpose is to support education and law enforcement in Curry County. Atkins’ daughter, and longtime steward of the Foundation, lived in Brookings prior to her death in 2007.
Curry County, population approximately 23,000.
The Foundation reported to the IRS donations consistent with the Foundation’s purpose. According to publicly available IRS filings, the Foundation contributed $390,524 to the Curry County Sheriff Department, the Curry County Sheriff and Curry County Sheriff Search & Rescue between 2009 and 2023 in amounts ranging from $2,000 (2011) and $58,677 (2013).
But documents produced by the Foundation to the FBI, and reported here for the first time, and county tax and Department of Motor Vehicles records show some of the most valuable items purchased by the foundation never became county property and became the property of Ward personally. Additionally, Smith, the Foundation manager, admitted to the FBI he does not know to what use nearly $65,000 in funds were put.
The $53,000 storage building and $28,000 travel trailer Sheriff Ward holds as private property
In 2017, records show, the foundation paid $43,380.00 to construct a metal storage building on a new concrete pad on Ward’s land in Gold Beach, just steps from his home. The foundation paid an additional $4,665.00 for excavation and site preparation for the building on Ward’s property, and, in early 2018, $4,712.00 to wire the new building. The Curry County assessor includes the 1,728 square-foot building as part of the tax assessed value of Ward’s real property.
Source: Curry County Assessor
In October 2019, Ward executed a declaration in which he swears “under penalties of perjury” the storage building was installed on his property “because the Sheriff’s Department did not have a place for the storage building.” He attested the building was the property of the Sheriff’s Office and if he sold his property, the county could disassemble and move it to another location. Ward swore, “Any personal use [of the building] by me or my family is negligible or none.”
A satellite image of John Ward’s property in Gold Beach, with the storage building purchased and installed by the John G. Atkins Foundation in 2017, and, to its right, a detached garage and Ward’s house. (Image from Google Earth.)
Curry County Commissioner Jay Trost told ORF neither Ward nor the Foundation inquired about county land available for the shop building. Trost said the county has many acres of vacant property and stores equipment, owned by the county, for the Sheriff’s Department’s search and rescue operations in a county-leased hangar at the Gold Beach airport.
Ward and Foundation manager Rory Smith told ORF in interviews in May the Foundation intended to keep donated items out of county ownership due to the timber-dependent county’s budget and financial turmoil. Ward did not respond to repeated requests for an interview for this story. Foundation attorney Jonathan Mishkin of Lake Oswego declined an interview.
The execution of Ward’s declaration in October 2019, two years after the Foundation purchased the building for installation on his property, came as Ward’s predecessor as Sheriff landed in hot water with his new employer. John Bishop resigned as Sheriff in 2014 to become the executive director of the Oregon State Sheriffs’ Association. In 2019, Bishop’s role with the Sheriffs’ Association came to an end, with the former Sheriff pleading guilty to a charge of first-degree theft for inappropriate expenditures of Association funds.
Bishop was sentenced to two years’ probation and 180 hours of community service and ordered to pay $13,000 in restitution to the Association, according to the Associated Press. According to the Wild Coast Compass, which covers news on the southern Oregon coast, the OSSA identified the crimes in a financial review conducted in “early 2019.” Bishop pleaded guilty almost exactly a month after the date of Ward’s declaration.
The year 2017 was a busy one for the Foundation. In addition to the storage building, the foundation that year purchased a 31-foot travel trailer for $29,880.00, and reported to the IRS it donated the trailer to the Sheriff’s Office. Notations on the receipt for purchase indicate the trailer could have been intended for use as a command center trailer for the Sheriff’s Office. A county official told ORF it never received the trailer. A summary of Department of Motor Vehicle records reviewed by ORF show the trailer has been titled to John Ward personally at his home address since April 2017.
An example of a 31-ft. 2017 Keystone Cougar travel trailer
Foundation manager told FBI he doesn’t know how $64,237 was spent
Foundation manager Rory Smith created and submitted to the FBI a narrative explanation of some of the donations made by the Foundation to the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office or the Search and Rescue division of that office between 2009 and 2016. In it, Smith writes that he cannot identify the purpose of $64,237.00 the Foundation told the IRS it donated to the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office during that timeframe.
In the document, Smith does explain the foundation paid $16,672 on a retirement party for John Bishop in 2014, as well as the purchase of a “jet ski I bought for John Ward for $6,199” that same year. For 2013, Smith writes, “This is the year I bought the Sheriff John Bishop the $18,399 ATV.” In 2012, “The foundation bought then Sheriff John Bishop a jet boat for use in search and rescue for $28,000,” and paid an extra $3,000 to have a new motor installed in it. The same year, Smith wrote, the foundation bought a “giant mobile grill for $8,681 to be used for the Sheriff’s functions during the summer with deputies and others.” The grill was mounted on a trailer and transported by truck.
Curry County has no record of owning any of the items enumerated by Smith, officials said.
In a number of entries, and in a May interview with ORF, Smith asserted the items purchased by the Foundation, and reported as donated to the Sheriff’s Office, were “never intended to be owned by the county.” The Curry County Sheriff’s Office is a part of Curry County government, and all property “owned” by the Sheriff’s Office is actually owned by the county.
County responds
In a statement provided to ORF, Curry County officials wrote, prior to obtaining the records provided by the Atkins Foundation to the FBI,
The County had no prior knowledge that the Atkins Foundation donated these funds to the Curry County Sheriff’s Office, or that these assets existed, and as a result, the assets were not identified in County records, nor were any insured, which would be required for use of those assets during any potential search and rescue efforts and/or for any Sheriff’s Office operations.
And in a statement, Commissioner Jay Trost wrote,
It is difficult to comprehend that corruption of this magnitude can happen at the local level, and we are dedicated to rooting it out. Questioning the integrity of the Sheriff is understandably not a popular process, but as we see now, it was a necessary one. It is clear now that the attempts to gain signatures to recall two commissioners and file a false bar complaint against the County Counsel were merely attempts to subvert accountability. We understand that although this process isn’t over, it is likely that more will be found in the coming weeks. It is difficult to grasp that the very individuals charged with keeping us all safe and who have been consistently telling everyone they have no money to do so, found a way to enrich themselves at the expense of the citizens of Curry County.
In July of last year, Lieutenant Jeremy Krohn of the Sheriff’s Office, who reports to Ward, filed recall petitions against County Commissioners Trost and Patrick Hollinger, both of whom have pushed for greater scrutiny of Sheriff’s Office operations. The petitions, each of which failed to receive the required 1,900 signatures to qualify for the ballot, accused Trost of supporting “expenditures like additional legal fees to litigate against elected officials,” an apparent reference to the county’s lawsuit seeking an accounting of county property in Ward’s, and not the county’s, possession.
Last November, Circuit Court Judge Martin Stone entered a judgment requiring Ward to coordinate with the county regarding lawful surplus property disposal, to comply with Commission-adopted county policies and pay the county $4,426.00 in attorney fees arising from Ward’s opposition to a discovery request by the county. Director of County Operations Fitzgerald and Commissioner Jay Trost told ORF in May the county believes Ward has failed to abide by the judgment, and the county seeks a contempt order against Ward.
Curry County has struggled with economic challenges common to rural Oregon, where reductions in timber harvests, fishing and federal payments intended to mitigate lost tax revenue from reduced timber harvests on federal land have hamstrung families, businesses and local governments.
As county revenue dwindled, county commissioners attempted at least six times since 2013 to create a separate property tax levy to support the Sheriffs Office. Each attempt failed, most recently in May 2025, when 60% of county voters rejected a levy that would have raised taxes on property owners to fund an additional $4 million per year to the Sheriff’s Office.
Ward and Smith denied any wrongdoing in interviews with ORF in May. Neither has been charged with any crime in connection with the donations.
Oregon Roundup Foundation created this article. ORF is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation dedicated to covering Oregon political and government news. Media outlets are welcome to use this article for free with attribution of the author and Oregon Roundup Foundation.