An ‘adrenaline junkie’ is a person who thrives on physical excitement.

Someone who enjoys extreme sports like ice climbing and motorcycle racing. People who enjoy intense and thrilling activities as a hobby or for their occupation.

Mineral County Deputy Pat Nobles may not be quite to that level, but he lights up when he shares stories in which he has personally engaged in like high speed chases, getting shot at and wrestling bad guys to the ground and ‘cuffing’ them.

Deputy Nobles was born in Kalispell and raised in Polson with physical education being his favorite class. His father was a certified lumber grader and his mother was a traveling nurse.

He spent many hours as a young lad at the Polson Fire Department where his grandfather worked and by the age of 6, he was being timed by the firefighters on how fast he could gear-up.

After graduation he was a volunteer for the West Valley Search & Rescue between Kalispell and Whitefish and operated a 50-ton crane at the now defunct Columbia Falls Aluminum Company.

“That was a great company to work for and was a big loss to the Flathead Valley when they closed, but they took care of us with a federal grant most used to retrain into new careers. That’s when I decided to go into law enforcement, and I went to the Montana Police Academy in 2009.

"It was that or training to be an underwater welder,” he said.

He was a city law enforcement officer for Ronan and then St. Ignatius before moving to Superior a couple of years ago after being hired by the Mineral County Sheriff’s Office.

“Yeah, I do admit I enjoy the thrill of being a peace officer, but I really like being of service to my community. At the end of the day, it feels good knowing I helped people.”

His wife and two children are rooted into the Superior School system and they have no plans of looking for anything else or anywhere else to live.

“Mineral County has a different culture than where I worked before because our area was part of the reservation (Salish Kootenai Reservation) and politics played a big part. But the Tribal Police, Highway Patrol, sheriffs and police departments worked well together.

"Funke (MCSO Deputy Ryan Funke) and I had some close calls, but we all had each other’s backs,” Nobles noted.

Law enforcement as a career wasn’t on his radar but community service was. Becoming a fireman made more sense with his early childhood upbringing in Polson, but he’s very satisfied with this direction and sees his family and himself living in Mineral County for a long, long time.

“We deal with bad people, but we get to work with wonderful people the strong majority of the time. Going into the schools on a request from a teacher to talk about our jobs and going to sporting events getting to visit with kids and parents is what I like. Communicating with the public. That’s it and that makes the bad part disappear.”

In his time away from the radio and patrol car, Deputy Nobles can be found doing what just about everybody in Montana does for recreation: hunting, fishing and shooting.