Kirk Youngstead

After graduating from Norwin in 1976, Kirk Youngstead immediately joined the U.S. Army and was deployed to Korea for 13 months. At nineteen, he was promoted to the rank of Sergeant and completed his four-year commitment in 1980.

Upon returning home, Youngstead worked in coal mines until he was hired as a 911 dispatcher in 1984. In 1985, Irwin Police Chief Ben Perkins asked Youngstead if he wanted to be a police officer for Irwin Borough, and he accepted the part-time position. He attended the Police Academy in 1986 and was hired full-time by North Huntingdon Township police in September 1990, receiving the rank of PFC while working patrol assignments and eventually working as a shift supervisor for eight years.

In 1990, Youngstead joined the Office of Attorney General Drug Task Force to help with the troubling drug issues facing Westmoreland County. He became a supervisor for the Drug Task Force in 1995 and held that position until retiring in 2018. Youngstead had many assignments and duties while employed at North Huntingdon, including as a motorcycle patrol officer, narcotics detective, fire investigator, emergency response team operator, and seventeen years as a board member of FOP Lodge #39, serving as vice president for ten years.

Youngstead was instrumental in several functions of the police department involving the Norwin community, including being involved in the planning stages of the Norwin Lions Reality Tour and being one of the drug lecturers at the reality tour. He was also the developer and instructor in the original NHTPD Junior Police Academy, a speaker at the 9th grade orientation/Parent Drug Awareness Program held at Norwin High School, a speaker at many Norwin Civic Groups on Drug Awareness, and one of the original officers to form the NHTPD Township Parks Halloween Haunted Trail.

Youngstead retired from NHTPD in 2018 after 28 years of service and was immediately hired by the Office of the Attorney General as a narcotics agent in 2018. He was a member of the AG Special Operations Group as the armored vehicle driver. Youngstead retired from the Attorney General Office in 2022 and was immediately hired by the Bedford County District Attorney’s Office as the Narcotics Supervisor for Bedford County. He left Bedford County in January of 2023.

Throughout his career, Youngstead made roughly 800 undercover narcotic buys of illegal substances, including buys as recent as November 2022. He has participated in approximately 400 search warrants that included many of his own undercover buys, and he prepared and supervised many of these search warrants. He has testified in state grand jury investigations as a local officer and as a state agent and has worked and assisted in investigations/arrests that included various agencies such as the DEA, FBI, US Marshals, ATF, Pennsylvania State Police, and more.

Due to the nature of Youngstead’s work, much of his volunteering and commitment to his profession and the Norwin community has not been documented in the public forum. Only those who worked with him directly know the extent of the time and commitment he has made.