MOSES LAKE — The life of a Washington State Patrol officer isn’t all glamorous, but it does have one thing going for it: the coolest hat in all law enforcement. 

“I adamantly and wholeheartedly believe that,” said Trooper Travis Cunningham. 

Cunningham, who is stationed in Okanogan County, was recently honored with the Chief Will Bachofner Award, the WSP’s highest award, according to an announcement from WSP Government and Media Relations Officer Capt. Deion Glover. The award is named for the longest-serving chief in the patrol’s history, who passed away in 2008 at the age of 92. 

Cunningham knew he wanted to be a state patrol officer from a fairly early age, growing up in the Lake Tahoe area of northern California, he said. Well, sort of. 

“If we're being completely honest, I wanted to be a firefighter growing up, and then it kind of morphed as I got older,” he said. “I realized that I had kind of a passion for the more investigative style of service. My family is almost all (California Highway Patrol) officers in California, so the state trooper side of law enforcement has always been very prevalent in my life.” 

When Cunningham was 17, his father retired and his parents moved to Western Washington, taking young Travis along with them. He graduated high school in 2015 and went into the Air National Guard, and when he was 20, he was hired by the WSP as a pre-academy cadet. He went through the initial training at the academy and then went to work at the governor’s mansion for nine months before going back and finishing his formal training. 

The WSP provides security for the state’s first family, which might call up a mental image of the stalwart guard, standing ever watchful and ready to take a bullet for his governor.  

It wasn’t quite like that, Cunningham said. 

“Essentially, all you did is you open doors for parties, checked IDs to make sure people were on guest lists, and just provided security for the mansion,” he said. “(You) make sure that after hours, only people that were allowed to be there were there … sitting in a little shack, making sure nobody crossed the locked gate at 1 in the morning.” 

Cunningham, newly married, graduated from the academy in 2019 and was sent to Okanogan straight out of the gate. He’d never been east of the mountains before, he said, and wasn’t sure what to expect. One thing he didn’t anticipate was spending Mother’s Day playing midwife by the side of the road. 

“I stopped a guy for speeding,” Cunningham said. “He was on his way to the hospital in Okanogan County. We’re a very spread-out rural area and he didn’t make it.” 

Cunningham’s academy training didn’t take into account the geography of some parts of Washington, he said.  

“There I was in the middle of nowhere by myself,” he said. “It was kind of brushed off, like ‘Just call an ambulance. They’ll get there quick.’ Well, that works when you work in Tacoma or Olympia or Seattle, but that doesn't work when you're 25 minutes outside of Pateros … You can be pretty far from pavement, let alone resources.” 

Cunningham and his wife had their first child not too long after, he said. 

He transferred for a while to Wenatchee, and then back to the west side, where both their families were, he said. 

“I worked over on the west side of the state for about 18 months in the Tacoma area,” he said. And then I said, ‘Wow, this was a great learning experience, and I learned a lot, mostly that I don't want to be here.” 

In 2022, Cunningham took a transfer back to Okanogan. There, he has held several positions, according to Glover’s announcement. Among those were Drug Recognition Expert, Standard Field Sobriety Test instructor, and Field Training Officer. He also received a commendation for saving the life of a citizen who had overdosed on fentanyl.  

Besides his work, Cunningham is involved in the community, Glover wrote, coaching soccer, volunteering with his kids’ Awana youth group and participating in his off-time in Shop with a Cop.  

“(It sounds) cliché, but I love law enforcement,” Cunningham said. “From holding people accountable for their lapses in judgment to going out and meeting people and hearing their stories … And they give you a car with lights and a siren.” 

And the hat? 

“And the hat. I worked really hard for that hat, and (I’m) proud of the hat and the uniform that I wear every day, four days a week,” he said. 

    Washington State Patrol Trooper Travis Cuningham., left, stops for a photo with the baby he delivered alongside Highway 153 and the baby’s father, whom Cunningham had pulled over for speeding to the hospital.