Service with a smile

BASILE — Earlin Fruge found his true calling, or callings rather, later in life than most.
Born in Eunice, and raised just outside of Basile, Earlin grew up in a farming family. His father farmed as did his father before him, and the Basile High graduate (Class of 1964) followed down that same path as he farmed 700 acres of rice and soybean for nearly three decades.
Due to the rising equipment costs, Fruge eventually had to leave farming altogether in 1994. After a few years as a delivery man for a regional crawfish wholesaler, Fruge soon found himself being recruited into law enforcement by former Evangeline Parish Sheriff Wayne Morein and interim sheriff Merton Soileau.
“They came to the house and they said ‘you are going to come work for us,’” Earlin said. “I told Wayne that I didn’t know nothin’ about being a deputy. He said, ‘don’t worry about that.’”
Fruge though believed that the sheriff wanted him to replace an elderly gentlemen that handled paperwork for the department. The next week, Fruge found out that man had been rehired so he believed that the sheriff didn’t need him anymore. So he went and got a job driving a shuttle bus at the casino in Kinder, which lasted a mere three weeks.
“On July 5th Wayne called and said ‘I thought you were coming to meet me?’ I said ‘sheriff you hired the old man back I didn’t think you needed me’. He said ‘I still need you to come work for me’. I told him ‘sheriff I started working at the casino’. He said ‘don’t worry about the casino and come work for me right now.’”
That night Fruge was given a car and all of EPSO’s codes, and was instructed to drive around the parish and get himself familiar with the codes and all of the parish’s back roads. That was the extent of Fruge’s training.
“I am trained myself,” laughed Earlin.
Fruge though wasn’t completely unfamiliar with law enforcement. He had ran and won the race for Ward 2 Constable in 1990, a position he has held ever since. Fruge learned how to serve residents and perform evictions, seizure of property and garnishments.
“They had an old man who was my neighbor who was constable and I always wanted to get into law enforcement,” Earlin said. “I told him if he ever quit that I would want to run for it. Then he died of cancer I think and that was my chance to go after it. I have been constable ever since.”
In his 43 years of combined service, Fruge has developed a reputation for being one of the most friendly, funny and compassionate law enforcement officers in the parish.
“I have never heard of anybody that doesn’t love Mr. Earlin,” Basile Justice of the Peace Charlotte Smith said. “He has a big heart and will help you as much as he can. He’s funny and he loves to laugh. Once he starts laughing you can’t help but start to laugh yourself. He is such a good person.”
“He told me this years ago,” said Earlin’s son Klint, who serves as reserve for the Eunice City Marshal’s Office. “The only friend you don’t have is the one you haven’t met yet. And I have taken that to the bank in my professional and personal life.”
Fruge has also become known for his ability to diffuse tense and dire situations, in particular his ability to talk people out of committing suicide.
“There have been incidents where people are holding a gun to their head and they call my dad,” Klint said. “He would literally take off his gun belt and go in unarmed and just sit down and cry with whoever it was and then come out with the weapon. He’s earned a lot of respect because of that. He has a big heart and that is what separates him from everybody else. He can feel your pain and makes it all better just by the words that he says.”
“I just talk them out of it,” Earlin said. “They would call me and ask me to go over there. The dispatcher called me one time and told me about one of my neighbors that had supposedly taken his wife hostage. So I got there and all the other guys there stopped me and said ‘what the hell you doin?’ and I said I was going to see my neighbor. They said ‘he going to shoot you’ and I said no he’s not. I talked to him and a few minutes later everything was okay.”
There have been times where Earlin has used the emotional power of family to help him prevent someone’s suicide attempt.
“I had a call in Pine Prairie one time and a man was having some problems,” Earlin said. “He had a gun and was upset. I told him that his kids were going to have kids and they were going to ask ‘where is my paw-paw at? And his son will have to tell them that he shot himself.’”
“That man threw his pistol down and started running towards me,” Earlin remembered. “I didn’t know what was going to happen. He came towards me and started crying.”
If serving as both a sheriff’s deputy and constable wasn’t enough for the 71-year-old, Fruge has also happily driven a parish school bus for the past 22 years, originally for Mamou schools and then for his alma mater Basile High.
That means Fruge leaves his house at 5:55 a.m. to run his bus route, then goes home at 7:45 and gets dressed for his EPSO shift, he then leaves later in the day to go run his route again before wrapping up his day back at EPSO.
“I see kids that were on my bus that now have their kids ride on it,” Earlin said. “I have drove two or three generations of one family.”
With being so well-liked in the parish, and possessing so much public service experience, will Earlin throw his name out there and possibly run for a higher office like police juror, mayor or maybe even sheriff?
“There is people out there that want me to run,” said Earlin, while holding back laughter. “I don’t want those positions. It is too much of a mess. Then they say, ‘you can run for sheriff’ and I tell them ‘no you can have that job.’”
What about slowing down in his older age? Any chance of cutting those three jobs down to two or possibly even one?
Not a chance.
“I know if I retired that I would be at home watching that TV and I wouldn’t last long,” Earlin said. “I would be dead and I have no desire to do that anytime soon.”