Lori Hedges New Emergency Management Coordinator

Lori Mooney Hedges is the new Emergency Management Coordinator for Cotton County. She was born in Wichita Falls Texas, and spent her life in Cotton County with her parents,  Charles and Gloria Mooney she is married to Trooper Robert Hedges. They live south of Temple and have five children and 6 grandchildren. Their oldest son Daniel, is in the Air Force, stationed in Texas, next oldest son Robert, is a Marine and he is stationed off of Parris Island, Beaufort, South Carolina, their third son, Tyler, is a Marine who recently got out of the Marines and is now in the Air National Guard and is a Police Officer for Walters Police Department. Their fourth son Andrew is a student at Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology in Okmulgee, Oklahoma studying electrical engineering,  and their daughter Sarah is a senior at Walters High School. They have six grandchildren.   

Hedges started her career in Law Enforcement in 1989, dispatching for both Cotton County Sheriffs Department and Jefferson County Sheriffs Department. In 1997, she was hired for the Communications Division of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol spending her career working out of the Lawton Office. In September 1997, she was placed on the Oklahoma Highway Patrols Command Post Operations and her first major disaster was responding to Bridgecreek, Oklahoma for the tornado outbreak in May 1999. In 2008 she was given an additional and permanent assignment with OHP, as a quick response unit - responding to all types of disasters across the state.  From floods, wild fires and tornadoes, to law enforcement situations like protests, manhunts and escapes. Hedges started training  extensively in Emergency Management in 2007.

In August 2019, after 22 and a half years, she decided it was time to retire from OHP and decided to start helping people locally. Hedges applied for and was hired as the Director of the Cotton County Emergency Management. She has an abundance of training in helping people in disaster situations and a willingness to help those in need. As Director of Emergency Management in Cotton County, it is her job to make sure Cotton County agencies and responders have the resources available to make sure the citizens of Cotton County get the help they need.

They also farm and raise cattle, and she likes gardening, and crochet. She is on the Temple Cemetery Board and volunteer to help photograph and locate lost graves. Hedges is a huge history nerd and reads anything she can get her hands on. Her passion is genealogy and Cotton County History. She loves walking a cemetery and finding out roots, and helping others map out their family trees.