Records show 2024 WA GOP hopeful failed to return sheriff-issued gun for more than a year

The man who wants to be Washington’s first Republican governor in 40 years was once so careless with his law enforcement-issued revolver that it wasn’t returned until after he was arrested for felony gun theft.

Misipati “Semi” Bird, who had previously served seven years as a U.S. Marine, misplaced the gun twice during the few months in the 1990s when he worked as a reserve deputy for the Yakima County Sheriff’s Office.

The first time, the loaded .357 Smith and Wesson along with some sheriff’s office keys were left inside his personal car when it was repossessed in Sunnyside.

The second time, Bird didn’t return the county’s gun and two uniforms after he left the department. It took more than 17 months for sheriff’s officials to track him down and to get the revolver back, show police and court records obtained by the Tri-City Herald under Washington’s Public Records Act.

Bird says it was all a misunderstanding.

But the records show that Yakima and Benton county officials were clearly frustrated in 1995 and 1996 when he didn’t know exactly where the gun was and didn’t seem concerned about finding and returning it.

Missing revolver

The Smith and Wesson Model 13 was discovered missing in 1995 when the Yakima County Sheriff’s Office conducted a routine weapons audit. Bird had left his reserve deputy position more than a year earlier.

The discovery led to months of phone calls, a registered letter and a visit by a Benton County sheriff’s deputy to Bird at his job at a Pasco car dealership.

When Bird still didn’t find and return the weapon, Yakima County prosecutors charged him with the Class B felony and issued an arrest warrant.

Bird told the Herald last week that he was “falsely accused of something he did not do.” Bird maintains that he did not steal the gun, it had just been misplaced among his roommate’s belongings while the pair were moving.

“How could I steal a weapon from a sheriff’s department that I’m volunteering for?” he said.

In the end, after Bird was criminally charged, it was his former roommate’s mother who found the revolver and returned it. Then Yakima County Sheriff Doug Blair came the 85 miles to the Tri-Cities to retrieve it in October 1996.

Bird, now 62, doesn’t talk much about his time in law enforcement, and his time with the Yakima Sheriff’s Office is not listed on his campaign website.

He is running as a Republican this year to replace Washington’s Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee, who is stepping down after a decade as the state’s chief executive.

While aspects of Bird’s life have been publicly vetted — including his 1984 court martial for striking a sergeant and his illegal vote on COVID masking that got him recalled in 2023 from the Richland School Board — the newly released records paint an unsettled time in Bird’s life after he left the Marine Corps.

Growing up in Washington

Bird was raised in Seattle as one of seven children to a single mother and dropped out of high school at 17 to join the military.

He spent eight years in the Marines before using the G.I. Bill to earn a college degree and then was working in various jobs in business and finance.

In 1993, Bird, then 32, was living in Sunnyside and began volunteering as a reserve deputy for Yakima County. In May that year, he was issued the Smith and Wesson.

Blair recently told the Herald that reserves, despite being unpaid volunteers, still must undergo extensive physical and firearms training before being issued a gun.

Two months later in July 1993, Sunnyside police contacted the Yakima County Sheriff’s Office to report that Bird’s personal car was repossessed. Inside, they’d found a loaded .357 revolver and holster, along with a Yakima County flotation coat, handcuffs and sheriff’s office keys.

Sheriff’s officials took the items and, records show, Bird retrieved them a month later.

A few months later, he apparently left the agency but he didn’t return his gun or two sheriff’s uniforms.

“He had been terminated as a reserve but had not turned in the pistol or holster,” said one report.

Bird told the Herald he left voluntarily to take a finance director job for a company in Oregon. His roommate’s parents had sold the home they were renting in the Tri-Cities, so both packed their things and left.

County officials told the Herald they no longer have a record of why Bird left because personnel records for reserve deputies, who are not paid employees, are kept only for six years after someone leaves.

At the time, Yakima Deputy Stephan Sutliff wrote in a report that he tried to find Bird to retrieve the gun but had no success.

So in October 1995 he contacted Lt. Charles Kistler with the Benton County Sheriff’s Office for help.

A few days later, a Benton County deputy found Bird and went to visit him at work at McCurley Chevrolet in Pasco.

Bird told the deputy that he left the pistol and uniforms with his roommate to return to the sheriff’s office for him.

“(The deputy) told him ... it was his responsibility to return it not his roommate’s,” said the report.

Two days later, the Yakima deputy sent Bird a registered letter “requesting the return of the items that belong to YSO.”

Moving mix-up

Bird told the Herald he remembers telling investigators that it was a mix up with moving boxes and that he would do his best to locate and return the items as soon as possible. He said he also offered to pay to replace the missing items.

“When my roommate found that he had mistakenly taken my box, he ensured that the items would be returned directly to the department,” Bird told the Herald.

His roommate was living in Kansas City, Mo., and his mother was in Seattle. The reports are unclear where the box with the gun was located.

Three months later, in January 1996, a Yakima detective again called Bird about the revolver.

“I spoke with Bird by phone and he advised that his roommate had left the gun in storage with his mother after he left for Kansas,” read the incident report. “Bird advised that he could obtain the gun within the next few weeks. I advised him that the returning of the gun is long overdue.”

The detective then told Bird to get the gun that day or arrange to get it returned. He said if it wasn’t taken care of before 5 p.m., he would request an arrest warrant.

Two weeks later, Yakima Detective Dave Johnson wrote: “I have not been contacted by Semi since we last talked. A warrant request was requested for 1st Degree Theft of a Firearm.”

A Yakima County Superior Court judge signed off on the warrant and bail was set at $2,000.

Six months later, on Aug. 30, 1996, a Benton County deputy arrested Bird in Pasco and he was taken to Yakima County.

A Tri-Cities bail bond company posted $2,000 bail bond the same day, and he appeared in court on Monday, Sept. 9. The judge released him on his own recognizance.

Nearly two months after Bird’s arrest, Yakima County reported the gun’s retrieval.

Sheriff Blair picked it up in Kennewick from Joyce Stoddard, the mother of Bird’s former roommate.

She told police at the time, according to records, that, “Her son moved to Kansas City and left the box in storage. She moved to Seattle and left the box in storage. Bird attempted contact with her, but the people who lived in her residence would not give him her phone number in Seattle. When she moved back to the Tri-Cities, she removed a number of boxes out of storage and when she was unpacking found the weapon.”

The charges were ultimately dropped in December 1996.

After his stint working in Oregon, Bird moved back to the Tri-Cities to work. He eventually enlisted with the Washington Army National Guard in May 2001 after finishing college.

When he was 40, Bird joined the U.S. Army on active duty following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and eventually became Special Forces. In 2016, he went to work as a behavioral science specialist doing workforce training and leadership development with the U.S. Department of Energy, Washington State University and for his own company, Team Concepts Training Services.

In November 2022 — after less than a year serving on the Richland School Board — Bird announced plans to join the open 2024 race for Washington governor.