With all this time on his hands coming, it was only fitting Leo Mueller held his young grandchildren in his arms during his Quincy Police Department retirement ceremony last Friday.

Mueller turned in his badge after 31 years with QPD. He's been in charge of the evidence room as a sworn officer since 1986, and QPD "has been like a home to me."

"There's been a lot of changes around here," he said Friday afternoon, standing in the hallway outside the evidence room. "A lot of people might think this job is boring, but I never thought of it that way."

Friends, family and co-workers gave him a fitting send-off Friday. A cake featured a photo of a much younger Mueller -- "Back when I had hair," he noted to much laughter.

Mueller plans to do some fishing, get stuff done around the house and hang out with his three grandchildren. His son, Chris, has been a QPD officer for more than a year, and his son-in-law, Chad Logsdon, is also an officer.

Mueller started at QPD as a civilian evidence technician in February 1977. He became a sworn officer in 1985, then was renamed an evidence technician a year later.

"I don't know if there is any such thing as an irreplaceable person, but Leo comes as close as it gets," Chief Rob Copley said. "He's done a great job for the department."

If you want to get a charge out of a local law enforcement officer, ask them about TV shows like "CSI." They usually depict a guy coming to the scene of a fire, finding the match that started it, identifying it under a microscope, then chasing the bad guy down a dark street in a tense gun battle before finally solving the case.

In real life, cases involve long, hard hours of laborious testing, careful handling of evidence and dedicated work by many different departments and people.

Mueller remembers many cases where his work proved crucial to a successful outcome.

Some 20 years ago, Mueller lifted a fingerprint off a door knob at a restaurant robbery scene. The robbers were eventually caught in the LaSalle-Peru area during another robbery, with the fingerprint part of the key evidence.

Another famous case involved a car fished out of the Mississippi River by Bob Bangert Park. A body was found inside the car, and it was towed to QPD headquarters.

Mueller lifted a fingerprint off the window, again leading to the killer being convicted.

At the scene of a violent criminal sexual assault, Mueller took a look around and wasn't sure there was much evidence. But he did have a broken window, and he told investigators to bring it down to the station.

Sure enough, he managed to find a print from the broken glass, and the suspect was arrested by the end of the day.

Mueller was glad to see Martha Danglade get the part-time job of civilian evidence custodian. She's donated time in the evidence department and has assisted Mueller for more than eight years.

Mueller himself will be replaced by a full-time civilian crime scene technician. Advancements in techniques and DNA has led many departments across the country to hire specially-trained civilians. Copley hopes to announce the hire within a month.

Meanwhile, Mueller will still come down once a week or so to help with leafy marijuana analysis and make sure the transition goes smoothly for the new hire. The evidence room itself contains thousands of boxes on shelves, rotated on a regular basis.

Mueller can look back at three decades of service with pride.

"I've had really good bosses and co-workers," he said. "They are a bunch of people who do the right things."

-- rhart@whig.com/221-3370