Chaplain Cyndee Thomas
Veteran police chaplain & leader in first-responder care
Senior Chaplain Cyndee Thomas has devoted her life’s work to walking alongside individuals during their most catastrophic moments and supporting the emergency personnel who respond to them. As the former Senior Chaplain of the Redding Police Department in California, Thomas established herself as a cornerstone of public-safety chaplaincy, providing direct field ministry during deaths, missing children investigations, domestic violence crises, and high-stress critical incidents.
Field Ministry, Death Notifications, and Family Support
Throughout her tenure with the Redding Police Department, Chaplain Thomas served as an indispensable asset to officers, crime victims, and the broader community. Her operational duties centered on handling the heaviest responsibilities of law enforcement support:
Death Notifications: Delivering difficult news to grieving families with deep empathy, tactical composure, and immediate follow-up care.
On-Scene Crisis Intervention: Deploying directly to violent crime scenes, fatal accidents, and acute emergencies to assist victims, witnesses, and first responders.
First-Responder Family Care: Supporting police officers and their families through the unique operational pressures, hypervigilance, and cumulative strain of a public safety career.
Executive Leadership: ICPC and First Responder Support Network
Beyond her departmental duties in Redding, Chaplain Thomas has shaped the standards and practice of law enforcement chaplaincy on a global scale.
As a past President of the International Conference of Police Chaplains (ICPC), she led the world’s premier professional organization for first-responder chaplains, advancing peer-support standards, ethics, and specialized crisis intervention training across international networks.
Continuing her commitment to post-traumatic recovery, Thomas serves as the Chaplain Director for the First Responder Support Network (FRSN). In this capacity, she helps guide specialized residential retreat programs—such as the West Coast Post-Trauma Retreat—designed specifically to help first responders, dispatchers, and their spouses process severe job-related trauma and moral injury.
Insights from the Police Chaplain Project Archive
In her extensive video interviews preserved by ChaplainUSA’s Police Chaplain Project, Chaplain Cyndee Thomas provides a transparent, deeply practical look into the reality of crisis chaplaincy. Her testimony brings high-stress emergency work down to its human core: a quiet room, a person in profound pain, and a chaplain committed to remaining present.
Key themes from her archival contributions include:
Navigating Community Suicide: Reflecting on the challenge of anchoring a community shaken by suicide and offering genuine hope without resorting to hollow clichés.
Early Calling and Lessons: Sharing her foundational experiences in chaplaincy and the early lessons that shaped her compassionate, grounded approach to trauma intervention.
A Family Tradition of Service: Appearing alongside her sister, pioneer Senior Chaplain Mindi Russell, to reflect on their shared upbringing and mutual dedication to law enforcement ministry.
Through her archived wisdom, executive leadership, and decades of field service, Senior Chaplain Cyndee Thomas continues to offer encouragement, practical guidance, and enduring perspective to officers, first-responder families, and chaplains nationwide.