Richard “Rick” Zeller is a cop and a man led by God … and by his wife, his high school sweetheart.

KPD Officer Rick Zeller

Today he is a 44-year-old Knoxville Police Department (KPD) patrol officer in the Central Business District – downtown, Fort Sanders and the area around the University of Tennessee. To keep this simple, here’s a timeline for this military, law enforcement, business, husband and father’s path to his family’s new forever home in Knoxville.

  • May 1999: graduate of Santa Clarita High School in California
  • December 28, 2003 – Married Amanda Shipman
  • 2003-2006: U.S. Army Airborne, Honorable Discharge as a Sergeant E-5
  • 2006 – Moved to Houston, Texas, where Amanda’s mother lived. She now lives in Knoxville in their same subdivision. After working as a construction manager, he missed the military and decided to join the Houston Police Dept. (HPD) where he worked for almost seven years. “Lots of similarities between the police and military,” he said. “There is a brotherhood in both that civilians do not understand.”
  • In September 2015 he left the HPD for greener pastures and more money and became a retail sales specialist for Post Consumer Brands Cereal in Houston.
  • In November 2021 he was promoted to southeastern retail operations manager and transferred to Knoxville, managing Post in six states and parts of two others. The travel wore him out. He missed two things – family and police work. He left Post in August 2023.
  • September 2023 hired by KPD, he entered the KPD Training Academy and was its class president, assigned to patrol.

His immediate supervisor is Central District Commander Darrell Griffin and here are his comments about Zeller: “In his relatively short time at KPD, Officer Zeller has proven to be an outstanding representative of our department and demonstrated a deep desire to contribute to our mission. We have benefited greatly from his prior law enforcement experience as well as his passion for service and the characteristics he embodies.”

Now, let’s fill in a few details.

Zeller was playing football at the College of the Canyons in his hometown of Santa Clarita, California, when the Twin Towers fell on 9-11 in New York City. He left college after a year. God was pushing him, he says without hesitation. “9-11 was my motivation. I felt like I needed to do something for my country because of the attacks. I had never thought about the military. God started pushing me hard to join.”

He joined the U.S. Army in July 2003 and spent over three years as an Airborne Infantryman stationed in Vicenza, Italy, December 2003 to December 2006. He and his unit spent a year in Afghanistan as part of the Army’s Operation Enduring Freedom. He was a mortarman, and on Memorial Day 2005, his unit was pinned down on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border at its observation post.

“It turned out we were the ones being observed by the Taliban,” Zeller said. “We started taking a lot of incoming fire and our fire mission information was in a Humvee about 30 yards from where we were pinned down,” he recalls. “We had to get that fire mission information to direct fire and survive. So, I ran to the Humvee and back under fire and got it so we could get support fire. And we made it out.” And for that act of bravery, Zeller was awarded the Army Commendation Medal with Valor.

Fast forward to a Sunday in a pew during a 2023 service at First Baptist Church Concord with his wife. “All of a sudden it was like I took a punch to my gut – from God, letting me know that He got me to move here to do something other than sell cereal,” Zeller said, a moment, he says, he shall never forget. “I turned to Amanda and told her and she said if I’m smart, I should pay attention to what God was telling me, especially since I was sitting in his house. I had even been having thoughts like ‘What am I doing selling cereal?’”

That moment led to Chapter 2 of his police world. He joined the KPD.

Along the way, Amanda obtained a doctorate and now works in the UT College of Education. She and Rick have two sons – Jackson, 18, who is headed to UT-Chattanooga on a baseball scholarship after playing at Farragut High School, and Colton, a Farragut High rising sophomore. He’s also a baseball player. From 2011 to 2013 Zeller coached the Farragut Middle School team.

His and Amanda’s first trips to Knoxville began when her younger sisters were playing for the Tennessee softball team – Maddy and Ally Shipman. That’s when they fell in love with Knoxville.

During his years in Houston, Zeller returned to college and earned a degree in criminal justice from Lamar University.

While at the HPD, he completed training in interview/ interrogation, tactical training and differential response team. He also was part of the tactical unit and was level 1&2 active shooter response certified, differential response team certified and special response group certified. While there was honored with a life saving award and a humanitarian service award.

These days, he explains, his patrol focus is preventing and solving car, business and home/ house burglaries, checking on suspicious people and answering “most anything that happens.” The day before our interview, he responded to a residential burglary in Fort Sanders. “The owner had a video of the alleged burglar and I talked with him at about 6 p.m.,” Zeller said. “We got the man’s ID and later I saw a guy matching the description on Henley Street and made the arrest. That was just before 10 p.m. We returned the man’s stolen property and also found drugs. Great outcome all around.”

Zeller also volunteered to be on the KPD recruiting team. He calls it “a good opportunity for me to help bring some focus for veterans transitioning from the military back to life and work after serving. I think my perspective on the military and being a cop is unique and can help the vets and our department bring in some quality officers.”

His approach to his work is God driven as well. “I approach everyone I come across, every day, with respect, like I’m talking with my mother. If you can do that, you’ll be successful. I have taken that to heart to be a positive example of a cop and to help people and maybe change a person’s life when I’m working. God has put me here for a reason and that’s to help me give a little light in our crazy world and maybe make a difference. I am a cop forever.”

Tom King has been the editor of newspapers in Texas and California and also worked in Tennessee and Georgia. If you have someone you think we should consider featuring, please email him at the link with his name or text him at 865-659-3562.

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