Pulver, P.I.

Tilted back in his chair as cigar smoke swirled in the air inside his office, desk littered with papers, professional certificates adorning the walls and sunlight filtering through the open shades, Ted Pulver’s casual demeanor hinted at the practiced patience his job often demands.

The owner and lone employee of Pulver Investigations & Polygraph Inc. in Post Falls, the cigar-puffing private eye exudes a longtime career of digging for the truth.

Since moving to the area in the mid-1980s, the Southern California native has built a reputable business through mainly behind-the-scenes dealings. With almost 30 years of investigative experience, including state, federal and private contracting jobs for civil and major crimes, Pulver’s developed a sharp eye for telling signals … and poker hands.

“All of what I do is behind the scenes,” he explains about the nature of analytical work and building cases, adding that the bulk of his business is made up of private investigations for local businesses for reasons such as finding the source of lost assets or proprietary information. “Somebody’s got to figure out the real truth of what happened.”

While making sense of the truth can be a time-consuming and muddled task, Pulver utilizes a set of meticulous approaches that are both ingrained and in-office. Often he’ll conduct process-of-elimination interviews, whittling away the guiltless and zeroing in on the suspected guilty.

Other times, the facts are obtained through observation, where he’ll shadow suspects in drawn-out patrols. If all else fails, and this is the one Pulver said is the most worrisome for the guilty party, the person is brought to his office, strapped to the 97 percent-accurate polygraph machine while their brain activity and nervous system reactions are monitored through questioning.

While the subtle art of private investigations has paid off well for Pulver through the years, with a skilled poker game as evidence, his career was set in motion in an unexpected way.

It was at the tail end of the Vietnam War when Pulver, training to be a paratrooper in the U.S. Army, was injured during a nighttime live-fire exercise. After dropping onto a makeshift battlefield, concussive blasts raining down around his platoon as they darted in the dark for perimeter cover, Pulver ran head-first into a tree branch, severely damaging his right eye.

It was then, while sidelined from the airborne special forces training, that Pulver was given the opportunity to attend the Army’s Intelligence Center and School in Arizona and later join an intelligence unit, where his people-reading proficiency laid the groundwork for years to come.

“I got into intel school and really found a niche. So they trained me to be an interrogation agent, and from that led to polygraph school, and that led to private investigations,” he explained.

After leaving the military and obtaining a polygraph degree from the American Polygraph Association, and with funding from the government, the then-21-year-old Pulver started his own private investigation business in Los Angeles to carry out polygraph tests and private investigations for law enforcement agencies. “I was doing pretty well. That was nice to be set with my own business by the government,” Pulver recalled.

By age 27, the private investigator was able to sell his Southern California business, yet retain some clients until a few years ago, and semiretire in the mid-1980s in North Idaho with his wife. “My wife wanted to start a family in a nice, wholesome area,” he said.

But a change of location couldn’t quiet his inner sleuthhound. Pulver soon put his detective skills back to work as a volunteer special deputy for the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office, where he handled everything from murders and thefts, to cold cases that had long remained unsolved. “I got to make some great friends, and I actually was given the opportunity to become a full-time sheriff’s deputy,” Pulver said.

However, with his private investigative jobs paying more than double his likely salary – as much as $75 to $100 an hour currently – Pulver decided to leave his volunteer position in 1989 and open his own business, Pulver Investigations and Polygraph Inc. “The benefit of a private investigator is just that,” he offered, referring to his client’s confidentiality agreements. “Nothing beats experience. School is just opening the door for you. You’ve got to blend in and do your thing.”

Pulver’s list of former and current clients in North Idaho includes a mix of local companies and public agencies, including the Post Falls Police Department and the Washington State Department of Corrections. Post Falls police Lt. Greg McLean said that Pulver’s background in law enforcement and polygraph training have provided invaluable tools for the department over the 15 years he’s contracted with them.

“It helps out tremendously in figuring out what someone’s past is in regard to law enforcement” for hiring new officers, McLean said. “It’s good for us. If he gets into an area where he thinks there’s something more, it’s not uncommon for us to get a call from Ted saying, ‘Hey, you should check into this.’ A person is a whole different person when they know they’ll be sitting in front of a polygraph machine.”

As for the high cost to have someone sent to a polygraph school, he added that the 10 or so monthly lie detector tests Pulver performs are relatively low-cost alternatives. “We’re talking thousands and thousands of dollars to become a polygrapher,” Mclean said.

While Pulver frequently contracts out a handful of polygraph tests each month to local law enforcement groups, often to check if an applicant has lied to secure employment, he said his favorite part remains in investigations, especially if he can clear an innocent suspect’s name. “I just like doing the investigations,” he said.

And, Pulver explained, a side effect from his long career is that it “teaches you the benefits of good friends – a few good friends – good cigars, family; the good things in life.”