After getting my "feet wet" in Millard County, Nicole and I accepted a transfer to Beaver County. I was excited because it would put me south of I-70. Why was this important? I loved drug interdiction and I-15 to I-70 is a major corridor for drug trafficking. Being able to stop vehicles before the corridor was a big advantage.
They told us we could move as soon as we found a place to live. Rentals in Beaver were hard to find. We expected having to talk to people in Beaver to find a rental property. Nicole and I drove to Beaver to see what we could find.
Nicole and I drove through town looking for rental signs and apartment complexes. We found a small trailer court on the south end of town and noticed a couple outside. We didn’t know it then, but we met great people who would become our landlords, the Horlacher's!! They both retired from the State Prison and moved to Beaver. They owned a second trailer in the park, and it was coming available. We secured the rental and glad we did!!
Nicole got a job at Beaver Hospital and joined the ambulance team. We loved it!! In Beaver, there were 3 troopers, we supervised ourselves, and covered each other. We worked 8-hour shifts, but covered the county for 12 hours. If you were on day shift, you covered from 5 am to 5 pm and just the opposite on nights. Mornings would start early with a wake up call to go handle an accident.
I worked with the best trooper I ever met, Fred Swain. Fred and I bonded and called each other for help with an arrest on duty or not!
I met a great friend in Beaver, Craig Wright. I nicknamed him "Bif" and we are still friends today! Bif was single then but now is married with 3 great kids and has been the mayor of Beaver!! Our families spend time together every chance we can get.
In Beaver County, I patrolled 30 miles of Interstate and covered the state road, west, to the state line. We had fewer accidents, but often they were devastating. One particular accident I will never forget. Early in the morning, I responded to a single vehicle rollover near the I-70 junction. When I arrived, several citizen's stopped to give help to the driver. The citizen's were performing CPR. I updated the ambulance of the situation. I could tell that the driver would not make it and most likely was deceased. When the ambulance arrived, I asked them to remove him from the scene. I thanked all who stopped to help.
I learned the young man left California headed to his mom's house in Salt Lake City. The young man had fallen asleep, left the roadway, over-corrected, and rolled across the freeway, coming to rest in the center median. While the vehicle rolled, his head struck the pavement. The doctor told me the young man had broken major bones in his body and likely died on impact. This was a devastating accident. I learned a dog was in the vehicle. Citizens tried to secure the dog, but it ran off into a nearby field. I could not locate it.
The next day, Dispatch advised me the father of the young man was at the scene. I met the father and another son at the scene who had travelled from Colorado, to answer questions about what happened. I wept with the father as we looked at the accident marks and I told him the cause of the accident. They asked me about the dog. They could not find it. The father told me because they did not have the money to pay to transported his deceased son back to Colorado, he would transport him back to Colorado. I thought how awful the drive back would be with his deceased son.
This accident reminded me life is precious. Accidents like this have made it impossible for me to sleep in a moving vehicle!
