Dan Seman Will Protect You

Dan Seman looks like a cop, even if he isn’t one. At 49, his hair is graying, but his three-piece pinstripe suit does little to disguise his powerful build, especially when he removes the jacket. He has a cop’s outlook, a cop’s sense of humor, and a taste for the drama that comes with his job.

The founder and CEO of Avalon Fortress Security Corporation advises his business-executive clients to keep a low profile, and his own business follows that rule. The headquarters hide in a nondescript building in Coon Rapids, shared with a company that makes trade show decorations. Seman won’t disclose Avalon’s revenues, but says that the private firm he launched in 1982 is the biggest locally owned security company and the largest provider of security guards in Minnesota. A staff of just 35 or so employees runs the offices 24 hours a day, but Seman claims to have more “feet on the ground” in these parts than national and international competitors such as Guardsmark, Wackenhut, or Pinkerton do.

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Avalon’s building may be drab, but Seman’s spacious personal office is imposing, paneled in dark wood all the way to the 15-foot ceiling. Cherry, maybe. He’s not sure.

The office is soundproofed for confidential discussions with clients. The door has a fisheye peephole affording a full view of the hallway outside. He says the door is one-way bulletproof: You can’t shoot in, but he can shoot out. It’s hard to tell if he figures this really might come in handy, or if it’s just the kind of thing he likes so much about his career. Seman is a man who loves his job. And what he loves most is the weirdness that comes up.

About half of his business is providing traditional, 24-hour security guard services. Avalon guards respond to home and business alarm systems, and work at office buildings, manufacturing plants, condominiums, construction sites, car lots, nursing homes, and what have you—with “what have you” including some oil derricks and silver mines. Only about one-quarter of Avalon’s business is conducted in Minnesota, Seman says. Nationally, the company draws on some 5,000 guards and other specialists. Most are part-time contractors. Some are police officers who take off-duty assignments. Many are retired military people.

The other half of the business comes from consulting and personal-protection seminars, special events, and “special operations.” Special events run the gamut from Minnesota Vikings and Gopher games to monster-truck rallies, horse shows, craft fairs, ultimate-fighting contests in sports arenas or bars (“We always bring the tear gas to those”), and bobbing-for-trout competitions—yes, just like bobbing for apples—which he says are eerily popular in the Dakotas. Avalon was hired lately to provide security at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

And special operations? It’s “a huge part of the business that I never saw coming,” Seman says. It begins with executive-protection services for businesspeople, politicians, celebrities, and wealthy families. It extends to sitting in on employee firings, monitoring labor strikes, guarding weddings and funerals (usually from an ex-spouse or jilted lover), and “kidnapping” teenagers on their parents’ behalf to whisk them to drug-treatment centers.

Seman takes executive-protection assignments himself as time permits. His past clients have included Arizona Senator John McCain, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, actors Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, and Burgess Meredith (during the Minnesota filming of Grumpy Old Men), and comedians Bob Newhart and Don Rickles. He cites all of those people as charming exceptions to the rule that politicians and Hollywood celebrities are generally odious, for reasons that he later makes clear.