‘Mac’ Well Read, Well Armed for Several Jobs

Tom McIntosh is Sierra County’s pistol-packing librarian. He carries a gun when he moonlights as the county’s only bail bondsman.

McIntosh, 58, is a mild-mannered man under ordinary circumstances, and he is known affectionately to everyone in California’s second-smallest county (population 3,200) as “Mr. Mac.” He runs the county’s only public library out of a room he built over his garage. He used to keep the books in his living room.

And, in fact, Mr. Mac is far more comfortable with books than with pistols. He only carries a gun when on the trail of those who have skipped town after he has posted bail for them.

“When that happens, I chase them down. Otherwise, I’m liable for their bail. It has taken me as long as three weeks to find one guy who skipped. But I haven’t lost one yet,” said McIntosh, knocking on wood.

“Being a bail bondsman can be a dangerous job. You have to be armed when dealing with desperadoes. I carry a gun to capture them.”

His income as a bail bondsman, he said, is about $3,600 a year, or a little more than double the $1,536 a year the retired high school principal makes for running the library.

A sign outside his home proclaims: “McIntosh Library. Thurs. 10-8.”

“That’s when the library is officially open: Thursdays, 10 in the morning to 8 at night, but in fact, it is open whenever anybody wants it to be,” McIntosh said.

Patrons phone him when they want to borrow or return books or magazines. They wave him down on the street. They come to the library all hours of the day and night, seven days a week.

The library overlooks Downieville, (population 350) on a hill reached by a steep one-way street.

“Some of the older folks and others can’t make it up the hill, so they call me and tell me what books they want and I deliver them. The town isn’t that big,” McIntosh said.

There are 2,000 books in the library, all the property of Plumas County, the next county to the north. Three times a year McIntosh gets 200 books from the Plumas County Library and returns 200 books “that have been read or nobody wants to read.”

A periodical rack is filled with magazines, the majority subscribed to and paid for by the librarian.

If someone keeps a book longer than three or four weeks, Mr. Mac reminds him that the book is overdue. “Sometimes they forget. We have no late charges; no money exchanges hands in this library,” he noted.

The Dewey Decimal System is not in evidence here. Books are stacked and marked with symbols on the covers, such as a skull for mysteries, a cowboy for Westerns or an atom for science.

McIntosh was a math teacher and high school principal until he retired nine years ago “because I am a diabetic and my sugar shot sky-high from daily confrontations.” So he and his wife, Olive, who works in the county recorder’s office, moved to this small town for peace and quiet.

McIntosh believes he may be the only librarian-bail bondsman in America. “There was no bail bondsman in Sierra County. So, five years ago, I took that on as well as librarian,” he said.

The bail bondsman can be a soft touch. One person he posted bail for later abandoned his wife and three children. They had no place to stay. McIntosh took the $200 he received from posting the man’s $2,000 bail and used it to pay a month’s rent for the man’s family.

He also does title searches and auctions property. He even ran a portable sawmill for a while.

“You live in a small town where work is hard to come by, and you become a Jack-of-all-trades to survive,” said the librarian-bail bondsman-title searcher-auctioneer.