TAMPA, Fla. — A retired Hillsborough County deputy is still serving the community he once patrolled. Leon Paige is a weekly volunteer at the Harvest Hope Community Garden near Fletcher Avenue in Tampa.

What You Need To Know

  • Leon Paige was a Hillsborough County deputy for 28 years. Then he was a reserve deputy for four more years. 

  • Paige was part of an effort to combat drug dealing in a neighborhood off of Fletcher Avenue. 

  • He is now the vice chair of the University Area Community Development corporation. 

  • Paige volunteers weekly at the Harvest Hope Community Garden. 

Paige spent 28 years as a Hillsborough Sheriff’s Office deputy and then four years as a reserve deputy. Now he serves as the vice chair of the board of directors of the University Area Community Development Corporation. The garden is a project of the UACDC.

Paige said he developed a love for gardening while spending time on his grandparents’ farm in Alabama when he was a child.

“My grandparents had every kind of farm you can imagine,” he said. “One part of it was produce. The other part was livestock. I got a hand in doing some of everything.”

The garden and the park it’s connected to are signs that things have turned around for the neighborhood. Paige said he was part of a sheriff’s office effort to combat a drug dealing problem in the neighborhood in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

“We had to establish our presence and standards of enforcement so they would understand we were the law, not them,” Paige said of the drug dealers.

Paige said things have gotten better for the neighborhood since crime has decreased.

“And then you have to credit the residents,” he said. “Once they saw that there were some positives out here without hovering in the corners or in a house afraid to come out, they all started coming out and helping.”

Paige also credits UACDC Executive Director Dr. Sarah Combs’ vision for the neighborhood’s turnaround. “Well, you’d kind of have to be in a coma not to enjoy what’s going on out here,” he said.