About Allen Telgenhof

Allen Telgenhof has been the Charlevoix County Prosecuting Attorney since January 2013.

He graduated from Clio High School, Michigan State University and Thomas M. Cooley Law School and also attended Northwestern Michigan College.

While attending MSU, where he received a B.A. in business administration, Allen worked at the MSU Science Library and was an intern at the Michigan House of Representatives.

From 1985 to 1987, Allen worked for K-Mart Apparel Corporation as an assistant manager of stores in the Detroit area and supervised a traveling team responsible for store conversions throughout the Midwest.

He left K-Mart in 1987 and attended law school where he was an associate on the Cooley Law Review, was on the honor roll seven of seven terms, on the Dean’s List five times, received two awards of distinction – in criminal law and real property.  Allen graduated cum laude in an accelerated program, in just over two years.

While at Cooley, Allen worked at the State Law Library, the Attorney General’s Office and again at the House of Representatives where he was a Special Assistant in the Public Affairs Department of the Office of the Speaker.  That evolved into a full-time position upon graduation.

Allen left the Speaker’s Office in 1989 to return to the Flint area where he had grown up. In Flint, Allen worked at the firm of Hicks & Schmidlin worked he specialized in both civil and criminal litigation.

In early 1993, Allen started his own firm in his hometown of Clio and continued his trial practice.  Allen was recruited to move to northern Michigan by the firm of Pointner, Joseph & Corcoran in Charlevoix in 1994.

For the next 19 years, Allen was in private practice where he was partners with 7th Probate Judge Valerie K. Snyder and 33rd Circuit Judge Roy C. Hayes III.

In 2012, Allen ran for Charlevoix County Prosecuting Attorney and won the Republican primary with 68% of the vote, defeating the incumbent in every city and township in the county.  He was unopposed in the November general election and took office on January 1, 2013. He was re-elected unopposed in 2016.

As prosecuting attorney, Allen has handled major felony cases and has successfully tried cases involving homicide, attempted murder, criminal sexual conduct, child molestation, drug trafficking and assaultive crimes.

Allen has four children – Ty and Ally, who were born in Flint, and Will and Luke, born in Charlevoix.  Allen coached a multitude of youth sports including football, soccer, basketball, softball and baseball.

Allen’s love of baseball in particular led to him to coaching T-ball, Little League, forming two all-star travel teams as well as Little League All-Star teams.  In 2003 he was asked to join the Charlevoix High School baseball coaching staff as an assistant.  Allen became the JV baseball coach in 2004 and the varsity baseball coach in 2006.

In ten years as varsity coach at Charlevoix, Telgenhof’s teams won 177 games, most of any coach in school history, including posting a 78-24 record in his last three seasons at the helm. Additionally, eight times during his tenure, including his sons, Ty and Will, players received All-State recognition.

Allen was named Michigan High School Baseball Coaches Association District Baseball Coach of the Year in 2013 and Charlevoix County News Coach of the Year in 2013, 2014 and 2015.

After taking one year off from coaching, Telgenhof returned to lead the Boyne Falls baseball program from 2017 through 2020.

He served on school boards for eleven years, three in Clio, and eight in Charlevoix.  For six of those years, he served as board president.  During his time as board president, Allen spearheaded the effort to build a new high school in Charlevoix.

With his childhood friend, Bill Morgan, Allen founded the Clio Area Educational Foundation in 1992.  Now a part of the Greater Flint Community Foundation, CAEF has raised and donated tens of thousands of dollars in college scholarships and teacher grants.

While working as an attorney and coach, Allen has also pursued other avocations, including as a trained mediator, an arbitrator for the New York Stock Exchange and Financial Industry Regulatory and Authority, a sportswriter for the Charlevoix Courier from 2001 to 2007, an adjunct professor at North Central Michigan College from 2009 to 2011, a sports play-by-play announcer on the radio and internet from 2010 to the present.

As a sportswriter, Allen received recognition from the Michigan Press Association in 2003.

Allen has written articles that have been published by the American Bar Association, the National Association of Legal Assistants, the Petoskey News-Review, the Boyne City Gazette, the Grand Rapids Press and the Lansing State Journal.

He has also served as a Rotarian, City of Charlevoix Planning Commissioner, Charlevoix Schools Foundation board member, Charlevoix Little League president and on the Charlevoix School District Steering Committee.  Allen was recognized as the Clio Area School Alumnus of the Year in 1999.

In 2020, Allen was elected to the Board of Directors of the Prosecuting Attorneys Association of Michigan. He has served as faculty for PAAM’s Visual Trial School and serves on the legislative and annual meeting committees.