My Heroes Wear Blue

Being on the PPOA Board has its perks. One of them (the biggest and best thing) is being able to meet, listen to, interact with, assist and give advice to younger and newer members who are navigating the twists and turns of the Department, their units of assignment and their daily job duties. This could not have been more evident to me than on a recent morning I spent at Altadena Station.

The smoke has cleared. The community is filled with burnt-out dwellings and countless workers cleaning up sites, hauling away debris and sifting through the charred remains of so many people’s lives. Much has been said about our hero deputies who saved countless lives in the Altadena Fire. I could not be prouder to say that those brave men and women work for the same Department as I do. I call them “tan and green heroes” and have no embarrassment in saying it. However, after my morning at Altadena Station, I have expanded my favorite colors — because from now on, my heroes wear blue.

I got to meet three true heroes on that warm March morning. These heroes wore blue, and these three women made me so proud to be a member of Unit 621. I want to make it a point to introduce everyone to three of the finest members of the Altadena Station family and of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department: Lauren Kane, Isabel Fonseca and Mayra Garcia. All three worked the desk at the station during the deadly fires that killed nearly 20 people, injured dozens more and destroyed hundreds of homes in a matter of hours. Driving around the station is incredible — buildings that literally share the same block as the station burned to the ground. I was shocked to see the devastation. It’s something you would see on CNN when they are showing burnt-out blocks in a war zone.

As the devastation tore through Altadena block by block, three Law Enforcement Technicians risked their lives by staying on the phones and making sure the residents of the community had someone on the line who cared. None of these heroes were close to prepared for the onslaught of calls. For nearly 24 hours, the calls were non-stop as community members called asking for help, seeking advice and begging for deputies to come and save them. Since all 9-1-1 calls to Altadena are routed to Crescenta Valley Station, it became even more complicated, as the Crescenta Valley LETs had to prioritize the Altadena residents’ calls and transfer so many of them back to Altadena. There, all three of our blue heroes fielded communication that none of them had experienced in the past.

What do you tell a 60-year-old woman whose home is full of smoke, who sees flames all around her, with no first responders in sight, and has a bedridden elderly father and needs to evacuate? What do you tell a caller from across the country, frantic that his wife and kids haven’t been heard from all day and aren’t picking up his calls? How many times can you tell people that you are sending someone to check up on their loved ones when you realize there is no way to really give the call to a deputy? The calls for help got so numerous that they stopped entering them into the dispatch system — they had to resort to a pad of paper and a pencil. They also were happy to see other station personnel who were not necessarily trained on the LET position trying to pitch in, answer phones and console the community that was literally burning to the ground. This is when the unique Altadena family showed that when a family is in danger, they band together.

Halfway into the three days of hell the community endured, the station was evacuated and almost everyone headed to Crescenta Valley Station. A couple of “tan and green” heroes had to be encouraged, pressured and, ultimately, ordered to leave the station completely. All of us know that a sheriff’s station is never really “empty” and certainly never the site of personnel fleeing. My tan and green heroes don’t run from danger. But the evacuation order had to be given to save lives, as the fire was extremely close to the station. The electricity was off until the generator switched on, but smoke filled the hallways, and the fire alarms gave a loud piercing scream that people can still hear, which is one of the things our LETs remember the most. Yet, they all stayed on duty. They stayed on the phones. While our tan and green heroes were saving lives and evacuating threatened residents, our LETs never stopped. They never worried about their own safety. They only cared about the people on those phones.

Most of our members are too young to remember President Reagan, and definitely too young to remember an amazing speech he gave at Normandy Beach where so many young heroes gave their lives to fight Nazi fascism. He talked about heroism, and I am going to borrow his words and slightly alter them to remember those heroes who went 10-8 that day, imperiling their own lives. Tan and green and blue all served heroically.

I say to those LETs — with thanks to Mr. Reagan — why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to help those people? What inspired all the deputies and LETs who met there? We look at you, and somehow, we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love … I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender’s poem. You are men and women who in your “lives fought for life … and left the vivid air signed with your honor …”

As I left Altadena Station on that beautiful Monday morning, I looked across the street, literally 20 feet from my car, and saw the burnt-out shell of a commercial building and some single-family homes. The destruction was absolute. What kept the flames from hitting the station? What protected our heroes who stayed in the station until they had to be ordered to leave? God’s grace was upon all those brave men and women, and upon my new heroes, Mayra Garcia, Lauren Kane and Isabel Fonseca. My heroes wear blue.