Colonel Joel Wilkinson joined the Maine Warden Service in 1992 as a deputy game warden and has been in law enforcement for over 20 years. He served the Oxford County Sheriff’s Department and the Windham Police Department before becoming a full-time game warden in 1995. Joel is currently a game warden colonel, a position he has held for over four years serving under two separate governors for the State of Maine. He serves as the Inland State Boating Law Administrator for Maine. He is also on the Board of Trustees for the Maine Criminal Justice Academy and the Maine Drug Enforcement Advisory Board. While in the field supervisory role, Colonel Wilkinson was the dive team  for the Incident Management Team and supervised the Special Investigations Unit. While serving as the colonel and captain, Col. Wilkinson received the Manager of the Year award twice from the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and Governors Office in 2006 and 2010. He received the Maine State Police Colonels Award in 2002 for his work on a homicide investigation. He holds an associate’s degree in law enforcement from Southern Maine Community College.

The daughter of a foreign correspondent, Kate Braestrup spent her childhood in Algiers, New York City, Paris, Bangkok, Washington, D.C., and Sabillasville, Maryland. Educated at the Parsons School of Design/The New School and Georgetown University, Braestrup originally thought of herself primarily as a writer. She had published a novel, Onion, in 1990, as well as occasional essays in national publications. Braestrup entered the Bangor Theological Seminary in 1997 and was ordained in 2004. Since 2001, she has served as chaplain to the Maine Warden Service, joining the wardens as they search the wild lands and fresh waters of Maine for those who have lost their way, and offering comfort to those who wait for the ones they love to be rescued, or for their bodies to be recovered.