In the News

Sgt. Ian Huri stood hunched beneath a State Route 203 bridge just south of Monroe, interacting with a man in his late 20s who was living there illegally inside a tent on Friday morning.

The Snohomish County Sheriff’s deputy advised that he was trespassing on Department of Transportation property. Huri, who heads the agency’s Office of Neighborhoods Homeless and Direct Outreach division, was more interested in gauging if the man would be open to starting treatment for his addiction.

It had been a decade since the homeless man first tried drugs. He’d had had his wisdom teeth removed at 17, and the dentist prescribed him two types of pain medication. His dependence on opioids grew from that moment on.

Huri had asked the man to explain his situation for U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene, who was watching from a few feet away, on a rough dirt path that led to the small encampment. A handful of people were there when Huri, his team of deputies, embedded social worker Elisa Delgado, who works part-time for the sheriff’s office and Monroe Police, and the congresswoman arrived.