Employees at the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff-Coroner’s Office are often tasked with working long hours responding to local emergencies, mutual aid and other law enforcement responsibilities.
And that can mean lots of overtime hours far beyond the typical workweek.
All told, Sheriff’s Office employees collectively recorded 134,918 overtime hours in about a year, according to an analysis of county workers’ 2025 overtime records by The Tribune as part of its Reality Check series.
Of the sheriff’s 494 employees, 388 worked some amount of overtime, ranging from only a handful of hours to totals that ran into the six figures of additional pay.
At the top end, nine employees worked more than 1,000 hours of OT in 2025, and five collected more than $100,000 in overtime pay over the 12-month period.
The Tribune filed a Public Records Act request with the county for the most recent overtime data available, examining documents to determine Sheriff’s Office employees who were paid the highest wages and reported the most overtime hours in 2025.
In accordance with public records requirements, SLO County shared overtime records from Dec. 22, 2024, through Dec. 20, 2025, which is 52 weeks.
In some cases, Sheriff’s Office employees opted to cash in overtime hours as vacation time instead of receiving monetary payouts.
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