A Move South....to Beaver County!

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!

Arguing with God!!

We lived in two houses in Fillmore. We didn’t have a lot of money so we often played cards or other games to entertain ourselves. At the second house, we had a small garage on the house where we placed a makeshift basketball hoop. It was at 8 feet so playing on it felt like a real NBA player! Neighborhood boys would come to play basketball until late into the night. I learned it didn’t take money to for entertainment nor to meet the neighbors!

One night, Nicole panicked after we went to bed. With the house having only Nicole and I in it, I would place my gun on the top shelf of the closet. My wife and I were talking in bed, she became terrified. I tried to figure out what was going on as she pointed towards the closet. She said, “there’s a giant mouse in the closet!” I did not see or hear anything.  She pointed to the top shelf and said she could see red eyes. I laughed as I pulled the gun from the closet. The rear sights glow in the dark. The sights appeared to be glowing eyes, but it wasn’t a “radioactive” rodent. We got a fantastic laugh out of it!

Nicole grew up wanting to do one thing as a career and one thing only. I had met no one who was so determined to reach it. Nicole knew she would be a nurse. She took classes in high school preparing her to become a nurse. She became a CNA, EMT, and was on a list for the nursing program at UVSC (which is now UVU). Our plan when accepted to the nursing program was for her to go. In the meantime, Nicole could get a job at the hospital in Fillmore and ride on the ambulance in Fillmore.

Working in a small town hospital means being involved in tragic moments of your neighbor’s lives. A lady in town had a baby with several medical problems and Nicole took care of the baby and grew close to both mom and the baby. One day, we loaded up our truck with plans for a weekend away. Just before leaving, the ambulance pager went off for the address of small baby. She completed her time on call but told me to go to the ambulance shed because she was going on this call. Though I protested, Nicole told me I did not have a choice, so I took her to the shed. She left on the ambulance and I drove over to the hospital to pick her up. I watched the doctors and nurses preparing for the ambulance to arrive and knew something bad had happened. Nicole came in and was crying. We got in the truck to leave in silence. Nicole was upset. She then began yell at God asking why something like this would happen to a baby and this family. She yelled it was not fair and was mad at God. Nicole and I discussed God. Though the incident was tragic, Nicole and I grew closer together over the incident. When we mention her arguing with God, we go back to that moment.