A Waterford High School graduate now oversees all operational activities carried out by about 1,900 employees of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service in more than 190 locations around the world.

NCIS announced last week that it had appointed Samuel Worth of Waterford as its deputy director.

In a recent phone interview with The Day, Worth, 51, described his new job as the chief operating officer for the organization, which has an operating budget of $424.8 million this year.

Like many other government agencies and departments, NCIS has been affected by federal budget cuts and has "definitely not been in a growth mode," Worth said.

A large part of NCIS's work is criminal investigations, including major felony investigations such as sexual assault and narcotics cases, as well as economic crimes.

NCIS also has a large national security mission, which Worth now oversees. That includes counterterrorism and counterintelligence work, and protecting Navy and Marine Corps' secrets, for example.

More and more national security work is happening in cyberspace, Worth said.

More than 90 percent of the organization's workforce is civilian, including Director Andrew Traver, and its agents are all over the world — on the Horn of Africa, through South and Central America, aboard aircraft carriers.

When it comes to the submarine force, Worth says the entirety of NCIS's missions come into play, such as identifying and investigating instances of drug abuse or distribution, bribery or faulty parts in the contracting process, protecting against the "insider threat" and ensuring that technology does not fall into the wrong hands.

Worth, who has been with NCIS for 27 years, became interested in working for the agency while a criminal justice major at Norwich University, a private military college in Northfield, Vt.

"I saw NCIS as an organization that was tailor-made for someone like me," Worth said, explaining that he wanted to travel the world and was attracted to the diversity of the organization's missions.

He also was attracted to the military connection, as his father and a brother served in the Navy and two brothers served in the Marines.

In the past, he's served as the personal security adviser to the secretary of the Navy and oversaw operations on the West Coast, in the Pacific and Middle East, among other roles.

Worth is one of eight children who grew up in Waterford and graduated from Waterford High School. He and his siblings all were involved in sports and frequented Waterford Beach Park.

His parents have lived in Waterford for 40 years, so Worth always has considered the town home and maintains strong connections in the area, he said.

As for the television show "NCIS," Worth said it's brought a "great deal of visibility" to what was a "little known organization outside of the Department of the Navy."

j.bergman@theday.com