LA CANADA FLINTRIDGE

Ann Doneen

Tales from a forest full of heroes

November 10 2001

To members of the L.A. County Sheriff's Department Special Weapons and Tactics helicopter team, fall is slow time after summer's lost hikers and smashed motorcycles. It's the time before the car wrecks and freak accidents that come with winter ice and snow.

But with winter comes the worst, and Dep. Jim Harrell -- they call him Hondo -- and Dep. Gary Wilkerson are ready.

With two whining T-58-GE-10 turboshaft engines and whipping chopper blades, they fly up Angeles Crest Highway to Barley Flats for their 48-hour shifts, which begin at 10 a.m. They're among the 11 helicopter paramedics who turn the old Nike base near Strawberry Peak into a base camp for the 660 square miles of Angeles National Forest between Antelope Valley and the 210 Freeway, then east to the county line. It's treacherous territory. Colombian drug lords tie turncoats' hands behind their backs, then dump them after quick executions, below Red's Trailhead. Further in is where a doctor pushed his pregnant lover to her death, in a car he sent careening off a cliff. And further yet is the road where model Linda Sobek's mangled body was found.

Yet Hondo won't ever forget a cold night four years ago about this time of year, just after Thanksgiving, when someone kept trying to call 911 from a cell phone. The signal kept cutting out, so the location couldn't be traced. Up in the high country, the fog was rolling in fast. You could barely see your hand in front of your face. Sheets of dim rain had been drenching La Canada Flintridge, and search flights were impossible.

Hondo was the first to reach the scene. With the 3,000-horsepower green and gold Sikorsky SH3 Sea King helicopter hovering in place, he rappelled out the door, slid down to the site, then called for ground crews. Montrose Search and Rescue member Jim Edwards and three other team members took both the Chevy and the Ford black-and-white winch pickup trucks more than 45 miles up to the site.

Rescuers found the father right away, sprawled out in the icy dirt under the truck, apparently thrown clear as the pickup flew off the cliff. The way Hondo figures, maybe Dad had had too much to drink that night. Maybe Mom was driving. Maybe the East L.A. family had been on their way home from a family party in Palmdale.

No matter: "I looked in the window, and saw two little bodies in the back of the cab," Hondo recalled. "A little boy, about 3 or 4 years old, was holding his younger brother in his arms, and when I reached inside to grab his thin little arm, I might as well have been grabbing a cold steel pole. Frozen solid."

And where was Mama? Footprints circling the truck showed she had survived the plunge. She might have become disoriented and started heading down toward the lights. Looking down the mountain, rescuers headed for a human form 100 yards away. But as they approached, a mountain lion sprang forward and rushed off into the snowy brush.

"All we had to go by was what was left of her from the waist down," said Hondo. "There was no remaining evidence of even a skull or a spine."

***

A chilling winter story. But only one scene among countless episodes that the sheriff's department's 11 helicopter deputies and 23 Montrose Search and Rescue members must be ready for on any day. On a routine basis, they rescue teens from raging flood channels and comfort and prep crash victims before transportation to trauma centers. Work done, they look forward, not back, and only by chance do they ever again encounter the people they've saved.

Like the other helicopter paramedics, Harrell, who earns about $80,000 a year, is a certified scuba diver and former S.W.A.T. team member. But one lapse in judgment, or a sudden downdraft in narrow canyon during high winds, might result in a fatal crash for the 79-foot bird that he and the crew of four depend on.

Yet he considers his position to be "The best job on the department."

As for Edwards and the 22 other members of the Search and Rescue Team? You couldn't pay them for the work they do. Like the rest, they are volunteers who have regular jobs. Edwards, our former mayor, sells insurance Monday through Friday. Come rescue time, he works the ground round the clock, rappelling off cliffs, carrying out the litters. And he has been doing it 27 years.

Yes, gritty and tough they are. With tough jobs, in tough times. And it might be slow in the fall in the forest right now. But oh, it is nice to have heroes when you need 'em.