Those who know Matt McCaslin say he’s never known a stranger. While this may be true, some may not immediately recognize the former police lieutenant in his new role: assistant cook and custodial worker at Powell High School.

Instead of mandatory overtime and filing mountains of paperwork, McCaslin arrives at the school at 5:30 a.m. to begin his custodial duties before switching gears to prepare for the lunch period. Keeping him on his toes, PHS consolidated its two lunch periods into one large lunch rush this year.

“It can be a challenge to get everything prepped, everyone through the line and fed and then getting everyone through as quickly as we can,” McCaslin said. “We’ve been making it work pretty well so far I think.”

The first duty

Originally from the Bozeman area, McCaslin said he never spent much time in the Big Horn Basin before meeting his wife, Kim. They met while they were both studying elementary education at Montana State University.

After graduating in 1994, Kim accepted a job as a teacher at the Children’s Resource Center in Lovell and Matt took a job at Seidel’s Saddlery in Cody. After the first year in Lovell, they moved to Powell in order to live somewhere closer to the middle.

From the earliest days of living in Powell, McCaslin knew he wanted to be a part of the community. In an interview McCaslin did with the Tribune upon being sworn in as an officer more than 20 years ago, he talked about how much the town had grown on him.

“I wanted to get a little closer to Powell,” McCaslin said at the time. “I’d been working in Cody for the past eight years and living in Powell and I wanted to be more a part of this area and this community.”

While working in Cody, an officer friend told him about the job and he threw his hat in the ring. McCaslin was sworn in as an officer with the Powell Police Department on Oct. 1, 2004.

While serving with the police department, he became the student resource officer for Powell High School from 2010 to 2012. While rotations for an SRO usually last about three years, McCaslin left a year early to become a sergeant with the department.

“Being the school resource officer still was probably the most rewarding time of my career. As an officer, a lot of times, you forget how many good people there are in town because you end up dealing with a certain percentage of people 90% of the time,” McCaslin said. “But working in the schools, it reminded me how many great kids, great parents and great teachers we have in this community because you get to deal with them in all different ways every day.”

McCaslin served as a sergeant for the Powell Police Department until he was promoted to lieutenant in 2021, where he served as the second-in-command, responsible for training, mentoring and conducting administrative work.

McCaslin also served as the interim chief for several months prior to the current chief's arrival in 2024.

The best of both worlds

In February 2026, McCaslin retired from the police department after nearly 22 years of service to the community. Not wanting to waste any time, he was hired that same month to serve as an assistant cook and associate custodian at Powell High School.

One of the most enthusiastic voices in taking McCaslin onboard has been Powell High School’s principal, Tim Wormald.

“As an SRO, he fit in really well here and had positive relationships with everyone in the school and in the office, so once he retired and said he was interested in getting back into the schools, we were happy to have him back,” Wormald said. “We’re getting more than just his primary roles with the school, we feel like we’re getting somebody that’s safety minded and knows what to look out for to keep our school safe.”

Although he has replaced his body armor for a chef's coat and his service pistol for a mop, he still sees what he’s doing as serving on the frontline of his community.

“It’s actually been remarkably easy to adjust to. As a police officer, a lot of times you’re out there patrolling, working on your own or maybe working alongside a partner that you’re taking calls with. It’s kind of the same thing a little bit at the school too,” McCaslin said. “On the custodial end, I do my own thing and I’ll work with the other custodians now and again. In the kitchen, there’s just two of us in there: Schelley Argento and myself. We get done what needs to be done and I also get the chance to still interact with staff and students.”

McCaslin is thankful that he’s able to work for the district alongside his wife and daughters. His wife Kim and oldest daughter Bethany both work at Southside Elementary as a second grade teacher and a Title 1 teacher, respectively. His youngest daughter, Emily, also works in Powell at the aquatic center.

In his free time, he dabbles in a little bit of everything Wyoming has to offer, from hiking to homebrewing and working on raising two mustangs originally from the Pryor Mountains Wild Horse Range.

Through it all, he sees himself still just as much of a public servant as he was as a police officer.

“In my time as an officer specifically, I would always try and remember that I was there to serve the public, to help them, to take care of them, and be there for them in many different ways. Even in what I do today, whether it's on the custodial end or food service, this is still a way for me to serve my community,” McCaslin said. “I may not be out there patrolling the city, armed and ready to go that way, but I’m there to make sure that the staff and students have a clean and safe place to come learn and work. It doesn’t matter what your vocation is, I think there is always a way to serve your community.”