Kolin Raynes grew up in the northeastern Minnesota town of Hibbing.
So much of popular culture shaped his world. At a young age, he wanted to be a boxer after watching Sylvester Stallone's Rocky movies. Immediately, he started training by running around their small suburban house one Saturday morning. After a few laps, however, he was exhausted.
His boxing career was officially over.
Next, he watched the Indiana Jones movies and wanted so much to be an archaeologist. The only problem with this plan was that virtually none of them lived the kind of life Indy did.
Scratch that plan.
Just after high school graduation, he got accepted to Bemidji State University. He had an undeclared major, until one night he watched America's Most Wanted, and spiraling that thought in with the classic movie Silence of the Lambs, he declared a major of Criminal Justice.
Even though his career goal was to work for the FBI, he took a job as a part-time deputy for Glade County, in Glade, Minnesota--a small farming community roughly fifty miles north of the Twin Cities. His first shift also turned out to be the most memorable of his career so far, as he was called upon to investigate the case of a missing teenage girl who lived out in the rural county. Six days later, after a massive search, the body of Trisha Sandberg was found brutally murdered.
The case to this day remains unsolved.
A few months after the Sandberg case, Kolin got a job as a street cop for the Minneapolis PD. He worked there for over a decade before finally landing an investigator position for the PD's Violent Crime Unit.
