Tripping Over the Thin Blue Line

A best girlfriend of mine became a police officer in another town than the town I eventually became one in, and I was just thinking back over some of the humorous capers the both of us became a part of / hapless victims in during our law enforcement careers. One of a plethora of them is this...

At the time (I'll call her "Kathy") became the first female uniformed officer on her Department, I was a Dispatcher for the same agency. One blizzardy afternoon, we received an urgent call from a neighboring, sizable city, requesting that one of our units meet an approaching State Highway Patrol officer for the hand-off of a donated kidney, and then to complete a "hot" transport of the organ to our shared city limit borderline for a meet-up with one of the receiving city's uniformed patrol units. From there, that city's officers were to relay the organ, which had originated in a still larger metropolis in our state, on to the waiting hospital in their jurisdiction.

Because of the storm at hand, we'd doubled up all our officers in their cruisers ~ "one to steer and one to push", we were fond of saying' when the snow got this deep. It so happened that Kathy and her partner (who I'll call "Hal") were assigned to the Zone most strategic for taking this emergency run, and so I dispatched them to handle the call. Kathy was riding "shotgun" and Hal was at the wheel.

Not long thereafter, Kathy radioed in that they were at the meet site for the State Patrol, and a few minutes after that, she advised the "package" had been received and that her unit was now enroute to meet the receiving jurisdiction's cruiser. However, after their arrival at the borderline, a half an hour went by with no sign of the officers they were to waiting to meet up with. I found out by land line that their officers had slid off the highway into a ditch and were hopelessly mired in the snow there. Their Dispatcher had no idea when she would be able to get help to her own officers, let alone free up another of her units to come and meet mine. Upon advising Kathy of this, she requested permission to leave our jurisdiction long enough to deliver the "package" to the receiving hospital, which, after consultation with the Supervisor, was granted.

I continued periodically conducting radio checks on their unit, and they continued replying, giving their locations as their life-saving relay slowly progressed. Approximately 70 minutes into what normally would have been a nine minute trip one-way, and just as I was preparing to check on them yet again, I heard Hal's voice come across the air, saying, "That's okay, Kathy ~ everybody likes to see a cop flop". Because of their distance from our tower, their transmissions were now very static-y and somewhat garbled, but I was certain those had been the words Hal's voice had transmitted.

I radioed to their unit, " 306, do you have [radio] traffic?", and for several tense seconds thereafter, the airwaves remained silent as both I and our other mobile units awaited their reply. Finally, though very garbled, I heard Hal's weak transmission: " 306 is at the hospital, 300, and will be enroute back to our city in ten." I breathed a sigh of relief and asked that one of them give me a land line call before departing the hospital.

It was during that phone call that I learned the story behind his previous and very peculiar transmission...

Hal and Kathy had made their way through the blizzard to the receiving hospital, but not without having to pick their way through innumerable stranded motorists and emergent situational needs for detour. They finally got within four city blocks of the hospital, which was located in the heart of the downtown area of this particular city...

and there they got stuck in a snarled, rush-hour traffic standstill.

Knowing that the donated kidney had to be delivered within a given amount of time in order to remain viable for transplantation, Kathy told Hal, " I'll go ahead and run it into the hospital on foot, and while I'm delivering it, if you make it to the hospital, I'll meet you in the Emergency Room. If not, I'll hoof it back to the cruiser." Hal agreed to this, and Kathy put on her hat and gloves, grabbed the transport cooler, and set off at a dead run toward the hospital. She got approximately four car-lengths away from their cruiser, running alongside cars snarled in front of it, but hit a particular icy patch, slipped, fell... and slid, ass-over-applecart... completely off the sidewalk curb and under one of the stranded civilian cars. Hal, having witnessed the entire event, scrambled out of the unit and ran, slipping and falling himself several times, to the driver's side of the car he'd seen Kathy slide under, banged on the window, and instructed the driver, "no matter what, DO NOT take this car out of "Park" !!! The startled motorist voiced compliance, at which time Hal, who was a big, hulkin' feller anyway, slipped and slid his way over to the other side, got ahold of one of Kathy's protruding boot toes, and dragged her out from beneath the car, flat on her back, her eight-point hat all askew... still clutching the cooler with both gloved hands to her breast. The transmission I'd heard was the result of Hal's accidental keying of his remote as he bent over to help her back to her feet. Together, Hal and the scraped, bruised, tattered, torn, and sadly dishevelled Kathy walked their precious cargo into the hospital ~ where it did, indeed, make the timely, intimate, mutually beneficial, long-term acquaintance of its lucky and blessed new recipient.

It's all good, Kathy... maybe everybody DOES like to see a cop flop... . But you got 'er done, gal ... you got 'er done good.