By Carole Firstman

Andrea Brown is a California Highway Patrol paramedic flight officer. She’s used to emergencies, accidents and rescue missions, but it was just over a year ago that she faced her most challenging task, and she recalls every detail as if it were yesterday. “A hiker was headed towards Italy Pass along the Pacific Crest Trail when he went missing,” she says.

High in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, a lone hiker had been stranded for six freezing
nights after he fell from the top of a 12,000-foot cliff during a snowstorm. It was on a Wednesday that he tumbled down a rock slope and lost his glasses, compass, map, and walking stick. He broke his wrist and hit his head, finally landing on a narrow ledge, a 10-foot wide sliver of rock overhanging a sheer, long drop. For days he was trapped and unable to move.

Brown and her partner, pilot Bill Dixon, were one of the search and rescue air units that set out to find the hiker. Seven rescue teams and two helicopters searched an area of approximately 100 square miles.

The stranded hiker could see the helicopters but they couldn’t see him. The man was so high up on the mountain that he was actually looking down at the helicopters as they searched. Days passed. By the following Wednesday the man resigned himself to not being found, convinced that the search was over and he would die alone on an icy precipice.

At approximately 7:30 that same morning, the pilot of a small plane spotted the stranded man waving a red piece of material. The pilot radioed the CHP helicopter directly, and Brown was once again on the scene.

This time Brown saw the injured climber clinging to the narrow edge of a cliff. The helicopter would not be able to land, so the plan was for the chopper to fly close enough to the rock face for the hiker to step onto the skid then into the craft. Brown readied herself inside the helicopter as it flew along the face of a vertical rock mountain, just 300 feet below the mountain’s 12,000-foot peek.

Heavy winds whipped through the sky, swirled about and rapidly changed direction. Pilot Dixon skillfully maneuvered the H-40 aircraft close to the granite face; the rotors barely cleared the rock outcroppings. He lowered the helicopter to the ledge, placing the spinning blades inside a horizontal notch in the rocks. The blades whirled just two feet from the stony wall. If the wind currents shifted again it would have been a deadly disaster.

The chopper hovered precariously close to the 10-foot ledge. From the open door Brown called for the hiker to step onto the skid. She would help him inside the helicopter, she told him, he just needed to step off the ledge and onto the skid. There was about a two-foot gap from the cliff’s edge to the narrow skid. The man was paralyzed with fear and unable to make the step. Brown called out again. But still the man pressed his back against the mountain.

“He’s not coming,” Brown said to the pilot. She leaned out the open chopper door, placed her feet on the skid, and grabbed the hiker above the break on his fractured arm. He used his good arm to help pull himself aboard, grasping the handle on Brown’s seat.

In a daring team effort, flight officer Brown and pilot Dixon had plucked the hiker to safety. A life was saved. Mission accomplished.

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As an experienced flight medic with the CHP Central Division Air Operations Unit in Fresno, Brown is no stranger to emergency response. She is assigned to an H-40 helicopter, a specialized aircraft for search and rescue, medical transport, and law enforcement. The chopper is equipped with the same medical tools found in an ambulance as well as communication and tracking tools. While high mountain search and rescue operations for missing hikers get the most media press, law enforcement calls are much more common.

“We’re here to assist any officer, emergency response or law enforcement agency,” she says. “CHP, police, sheriff, fire—we do everything we can to make their job a little easier so they don’t put themselves at risk.” To that end, Brown and her cohorts may spend four hours of an eight-hour shift in flight on patrol. While every scene call is different, a vast majority of the calls are for crimes in progress. “Shootings, stabbings, and following the bad guys from above so the ground officers can back off of a 100-mile-an-hour chase.”

Advances in CHP helicopters and onboard auxiliary equipment have improved the ability of police, sheriff, and CHP ground officers to fight crime and maintain public safety. From their observational vantage point, the helicopter pilot or flight officer can safely monitor a vehicle and provide pertinent information to ground pursuit officers.

Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR), for example, allows air patrol officers to see at night by sensing body heat. “From the air we can remain in close proximity to the suspect while tracking the location and direction without being noticed,” Brown says. This enables officers on the ground to take action once the suspect has stopped or left the vehicle. The versatility and range of the helicopter decreases the use of high-speed pursuits and increases apprehension rates. “With FLIR and spotlights we can observe, track and illuminate people or places on the ground. We then communicate with ground units and provide information. We direct them either towards an intended position or away from a dangerous one.”

Brown has had a long career in emergency response. She worked as an ambulance paramedic for five years before enrolling in the CHP academy in Sacramento. She spent seven years as a CHP road officer, including three years in Bakersfield and three years in Fresno, before entering the CHP Central Division Air Operations Unit in 1994.

Her husband, Mike Brown, is a retired CHP pilot. “He started the program here in Fresno, back in 1979.” Together the couple has three children: 13-year-old Erik, 15-year-old Anna, and 11-year-old Benjamin. “You should have seen the other kids’ faces a few years back on Career Day when Mike and I came to the school in a helicopter,” she says with a laugh. “The other kindergarteners in class were in awe. They couldn’t believe it.”

Well, believe it. Andrea Brown certainly lives life on the edge—from the edge of a skid and the edge of a mountain cliff, that is. And she wouldn’t have it any other way. She likes the constant change. There’s always a new challenge, and this powerhouse of a woman is ready for whatever comes next. “Really, I have the best job on the Highway Patrol. I get to fly around in a multi-million dollar aircraft, all the calls are interesting, and I get to chase the bad guys. What we do makes a difference every single day.”

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