Official knows when to say when

LOGAN — A month ago, Cache County Attorney George Daines came to the conclusion that someone in the office needed to be cut loose, sent out to pasture, given the old pink slip, sacked. Choose your cliche. But they had to go.

It was him.

It didn't matter that he had two years left on his second four-year term in office. It didn't matter that he had done nothing wrong and there were not grounds for him to be laid off. It didn't matter that he was the boss.

Six years ago, when he started as county attorney, Daines had a list of things he wanted to accomplish. He made a promise to himself, and his wife, Mindy, that when the list was finished, so was he.

The list was finished.

He fired himself.

It may have been the most amiable firing in the history of Cache Valley.

First, Daines walked into the county executive's office and submitted his resignation letter. Next, he attended a goodbye party. Then he drove to the airport in Salt Lake, where he and six friends boarded a red-eye flight for the Caribbean island of St. Maarten by way of Atlanta.

The next day, they were on a sailboat island-hopping through the Lesser Antilles.

"What a nice way to leave," says Daines. "Lots of sun, good wind, good friends, and I don't have to read what they write about me in the papers.

"I think it was Ronald Reagan," he adds, "who said that when you leave you should just sail off into the sunset."

Back from the Caribbean with a nice winter tan, Daines makes it clear he wouldn't trade his six years in public service for anything.

"It was a lot of fun; a heck of a lot better than sitting in my law office and being bored," he says. "I didn't get bored being county attorney at all."

But such a life ages one, and Daines is frank about the toll the job took, particularly since he wasn't exactly the shy, retiring type.

"I was aggressive. I took on hard cases. I stirred up a lot of trouble," he confesses. "It's hard to be a prosecutor in a small town. You keep finding yourself involved with somebody you knew in high school."