Wipeout set official on path to Columbia job

Paula Hertwig Hopkins fought her way up the mountain in the Canadian Rockies, battling the snow, the slope and her own apprehensions. A friend lured her to the spot, daring her to ski down the mountainside, which was clearly beyond her skills.

Still, she went for it. Subtle conditions would forever alter her life: a thin layer of fresh, unpacked snow and a safety release on her ski binding set a notch too high.

Her ski dug under the snow. It stuck. The binding didn’t release the boot. Her knee, and her career, suffered the consequences.

The event forced Hertwig Hopkins to give up on the dream of becoming an FBI agent that she’d aspired to for years and nearly fulfilled. So the university cop in Chicago started climbing again, this time in a career that would lead her to become assistant city manager of Columbia.

Hertwig Hopkins has been assistant city manager since March 2000. Responsibilities are split between her and Assistant City Manager Bill Watkins, who will become the city manager on Jan. 7. Watkins’ duties have been more public; Hertwig Hopkins says she has “been more of the internal operations person.”

She acts as liaison between department heads and the city manager, leads labor and personnel benefits negotiations, and oversees several departments and commissions, including those related to public safety.

“I’ve had nothing but good experiences working with her,” said Mayor Darwin Hindman. “She’s very confident, she’s well-respected, she keeps excellent track of the issues important to the city, she works well with everyone she works with.”

Hertwig Hopkins is involved with organizations at the county, state and national levels, monitoring legislation and putting together congressional lists to win funds for local projects.

Before entering public administration, Hertwig Hopkins spent 14 years as a police officer at Northwestern University in in Chicago, climbing the ranks when few women could. She started on patrol, became a street sergeant, and spent her last eight years as the director for the downtown operation. But Hopkins always aspired to greater challenges.

“I had my sights set on being an FBI agent,” she said.

The FBI was interested, but she blew out her knee on the mountain before she could complete the tests.

“I could not get that knee back in the shape that I knew I’d have to get it into in order to sustain going through (the training),” Hertwig Hopkins said.

She decided to go back to school and get a master’s degree. After exploring several areas of study, she found inspiration in Bernard Western, then vice president for business and finance at Northwestern.

“He was a former city manager for two different suburban communities in Chicago, and I had a great admiration for him,” Hertwig Hopkins said. “He was a very confident person, very talented, had basically made some financial decisions at the university that basically was very successful in pulling it out of some very tough times that it was having.”

So Hertwig Hopkins found a degree, but she came to MU to pursue it.

“The turning point for me was between that first and second year, I did an internship in Osage Beach,” she said. “After that internship for that summer is when the then city administrator asked if I would consider coming back.”

Hertwig Hopkins finished her master’s degree and took a job as the assistant city administrator in Osage Beach, where she jumped right into her new profession.

“When you’re the assistant city administrator in that size town, you do just about everything,” Hertwig Hopkins said.

Hertwig Hopkins worked on some major projects in Osage Beach, including bringing the sewer system into the city, working with staff to develop 10-year capital improvement plans for public works and transportation, initiating the construction of a new city hall and drafting ordinances and helping with the institution of a $34 million ballot issue to create a municipal water system, which she saw as key to attracting businesses.

She moved up to city administrator in 1999 just before City Manager Ray Beck asked her to take the job of former assistant city manager Charles Hargrove, who had retired the previous year.

Outside her office, Hertwig Hopkins works with several local organizations, including the downtown Rotary Club and the Salvation Army. She also chairs the evangelical committee and sings in the choir at Trinity Lutheran Church.

Since her childhood, Hertwig Hopkins has loved being active and outdoors. She maintains that desire to be outdoors today with her husband, Ogle.

The couple ride their bikes on the Katy and MKT trails as often as possible, sail, hunt ducks or simply relax at their farm outside Osage Beach, where they enjoy spending their weekends. They have three children by Ogle’s first marriage, all of whom Hertwig Hopkins claims as her own.

“There’s a lot of challenges here,” she said. “There is never a day where there isn’t something that can be learned or make a contribution to the community.”