Correction appended: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Magee worked as a federal agent in the jungles of Bogotá, Colombia. Magee worked instead in the city of Bogotá and nearby jungles in Colombia.

Ken Magee, the new director of the University’s Department of Public Safety, can still remember a quieter, simpler Ann Arbor.

He can remember his youth, riding bikes down Washtenaw Avenue with a group of friends, on their way to the Michigan Union to grab a Coke from one of those old-timey vending machines or go bowling in the basement.

He can remember double scoops at Miller’s Ice Cream Shop on South University Avenue, or catching butterflies in the Arb, wielding an empty tin can tied to a stick with some string.

He can remember sweeping the floors of Crisler Arena during Michigan basketball games, and how his parents — both avid Michigan fans — dressed him in maize and blue as a little boy.

He can remember, too, leaving Ann Arbor, for a more fast-paced world beyond US-23 and M-14.

And now, with over 25 years of law enforcement experience, from the Jackson Police Department to the jungles of Colombia, Magee returns to Ann Arbor, giving more than just a fresh face to the 38-year-old department — he brings with him an intense passion for a school and a community he has always called home.

“I have a deep love for my community. And although I’ve been away for a while, I would come here, this is where I would come for vacations, this is where I would spend summers and bring my daughter to meet friends, this is where I was born, and this is where I want to die,” Magee said.

Magee has worked undercover in Detroit and as a federal agent at the Olympics. He has hunted Pablo Escobar, one of the world’s most notorious drug lords, and Escobar's Medellin Cartel in Colombia. He has captured a top 10 fugitive for the FBI. He has received the Administrator’s Award of Honor — the highest award granted by the Drug Enforcement Administration — twice.

And now, more than two decades later, Magee carries with him the same mindset as he begins overseeing this campus’s safety.

“I would like to make the place safer than it already is,” Magee said. “I want to enhance the department to make it more visible, to look at the police officers as partners in the whole social sector of government services.

“I want people to feel very comfortable,” he added, “from the youngest freshman to the oldest grad student.”

In March of last year, Bill Bess, the director of DPS at the time, announced his retirement. Shortly after, Hank Baier, associate vice president of Facilities and Operations, appointed a search committee to find a replacement for Bess as the head of DPS.

After screening about 250 candidates from colleges and universities across the country, the committee’s search was eventually scaled down to six. Those six were brought to Ann Arbor to be interviewed in person. The number was then cut to two, leaving Laura Wilson, chief of police at Stanford University, and Magee as the final candidates for the position.

“When we saw Ken Magee,” Baier said in an interview this month, “what was most intriguing to us, he has a professional resume, but most impressive to us was he grew up in the community.”

Magee was born in Ann Arbor in 1958 and grew up in his parent’s home just off of Hill Street. His father, a neurologist at the University Hospital and a professor in the Medical School, and his mother, who received her master’s degree in social work from the University, indoctrinated him in the ways of maize and blue at a very young age.

“When you’re born and raised in this town, you develop a very, very deep interest and love and affection for the University,” Magee said with a grin. “As a little boy growing up, the campus was my playground.