There have been a lot of changes for Sedona police recruit Cole Taylor over the last year. He earned a master’s degree in May 2023 and went to the five-month Northern Arizona Regional Training Academy at the start of the year.

His wife Hilary gave birth to Claire, the couple’s third child, in March and he started working as an SPD officer on Monday, June 3.

“We have three kids, Adasyan [7], Liam [4] and now Claire,” Taylor said. ”My family has done business with the Verde Valley for a long time. I’m related to Taylor Waste and Taylor and Sons hauling, so a lot of my cousins, aunts, uncles, dad owned a business, so I’ve been familiar with being within the Verde Valley and growing up here.”

Taylor was born and raised in Cottonwood and graduated from Mingus Union High School in 2006. After temporarily moving to the Phoenix metro area, where he met his wife, he worked as a volunteer firefighter for the Cottonwood Fire Department, a reserve firefighter for Copper Canyon Fire and Medical District, a reserve EMT for Verde Valley Ambulance Company, an EMT transporter for Verde Valley Medical Center and a clinical practice supervisor for Northern Arizona Healthcare for three years.

He received a bachelor’s degree in health care administration from the University of Phoenix, later followed by a master of business administration degree.

Taylor said “Customer service is the commonality between his medical and law enforcement experience. It’s being the face of somebody who’s in the city of Sedona, and you come in contact with people and help build that customer relation. We’re supposed to be leaders in our community.

“I feel like [my medical experience] prepared me how to talk to people and especially with supervising and taking complaints from people consistently. It helped me know how to talk to people and kind of handle problems.”

Taylor said growth in the area is the most significant change he has noticed.

“We used to rappel off Bell Rock in the mid-, early ’90s,” Taylor said. “My dad would take us out rappelling and now you can’t really get a parking spot, or even a permit to really do that off of rock faces here. It’s grown, which has been good, growth is always good. But there’s just a lot of changes.”

“I like to work, going to the gym, that’s where my most of my stress management kind of goes,” Taylor said. “I like to hunt and fish whatever’s in season … Elk is really fun in Northern Arizona and around Flagstaff because I’ve been able to go with my bow and I’ve been able to harvest a few.”

Growing up around music and the works of George Strait and Garth Brooks, Taylor also wrote his own songs for a long time, but eventually stepped away from it when he got busy with his family.

“I grew up with country music, just being a small town,” Taylor said. “My parents are from Snowflake, Taylor and St. John’s area, so they all listened to country music and got used to listening. Dad grew up on a ranch so country music was just kind of my thing.”

Taylor said he wants to contribute to the growth of SPD.

“I’d love to join the K-9 unit,” Taylor said. “But also, if [I] had the opportunity to climb up within the ranks as well, maybe sergeant … chief at some point, I have the education, it’s just the experience [that’s] needed. I feel like there’s a lot of potential growth for Sedona, and opportunities to make this department and this city great. And that all comes with great police officers … I’ve grown to love the department already within the last few months that I’ve been here.”