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Dave Brookshire (left), Chuck Rush (middle) and Brad Heppner (right) stand in front of an Arizona DPS helicopter Saturday morning on their helipad at the Flagstaff Pulliam Airport.
For police in pursuit or searching for suspects, they’re eyes in the sky. For wildland firefighters, they’re a ride out of dangerous situations. For lost or injured hikers and climbers, they’re rescuers without wings.
This crew of two comes equipped with propellers instead.
Brad Heppner and Dave Brookshire are sworn officers with the Arizona Department of Public Safety. Instead of getting behind the wheel of a patrol vehicle every morning, they don flight suits and work 24-hour shifts based out of Pulliam Airport in Flagstaff.
Their office travels at a cruising speed of more than 135 mph and might be the most multi-purpose vehicle in the DPS fleet. It’s a Bell 407 light helicopter — white with navy blue accents and the Arizona flag stretching across the tail under a bright blue DPS badge.
“It’s a typical utility helicopter,” said Heppner, a pilot and the aviation supervisor for DPS Air Rescue. He pointed out that it’s similar to helicopters used by Guardian Air and the hospital.
If you look closely, the bottom half of that DPS badge is actually a hatch. Behind that door are supplies you might find on any ambulance, but designed and packaged to maximize the use of minimal space.
While this helicopter is always staffed by a trooper/paramedic (Brookshire) and equipped to act like an ambulance in the sky, it can do a lot more than that. There are big black pads attached to the skids at the bottom of the helicopter. They’re called “bear paws” and they help to distribute weight evenly so the aircraft can land in the snow or sand. A light at the base of the helicopter is nicknamed the “night sun,” a bright and useful spotlight.
Those additions make it an ideal tool for law enforcement, search and rescue, and even firefighting — not just in Flagstaff, but across the state.
“In ’69 when Vietnam ended, pilots were coming back to the states,” Heppner said.
Those pilots needed jobs, and state agencies started to notice the merits of a light aircraft in serving multiple purposes. They launched the first aviation unit in Phoenix, according to Heppner. The Flagstaff crew was established later, in the 1980s, housed in a building owned by the City of Flagstaff.
“If an accident happened in the copper mines in Globe, it could take hours to get there by ground. Getting someone from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon or Globe to a trauma center during the ‘Golden Hour’ could happen with air rescue,” said Heppner, who was referring to the first hour after trauma or a medical emergency — when time is of the essence to preserve a patient’s life.
“There are four bases in all. If all four were in service, we can cover 92% of the state in an hour or less,” said Brookshire, noting the other aviation teams in Tucson, Kingman and Phoenix.
The trouble is, like most law enforcement agencies in our region, DPS Air Rescue is pressed for people. Low staffing means all four choppers are not in service at the same time.
“Only having two [aviation units in service] has a significant impact on speed and response,” Brookshire said.
Heppner said it’s difficult to recruit pilots from the private sector, where there’s more money to be made in commercial flights. DPS helicopter pilots also wear a lot of hats and need a lot of training to be able to do that.
There’s a mix of sworn troopers who are pilots and pilots who aren’t, but the training and preparation to work out of a helicopter for DPS is extensive.
Chuck Rush of Arizona DPS Air Rescue looks out the window of his helicopter Saturday morning as he practices picking up and moving a weighted cylinder hanging from a 150-foot rescue rope to and from small circles on the helipad at Flagstaff Pulliam Airport. This exercise is one of many skills that rescue helicopter pilots must practice routinely.
Most people who apply for the job will need to be paramedics. Then, to join air rescue patrol as a trooper paramedic, most officers go to a 20-week basic academy, followed by 10 weeks of trooper academy. After that, they spend a minimum of one year on the road as highway patrol. Once a trooper joins an aviation unit they’ll receive an additional 16-plus weeks of training to prepare for the air. Once you’re stationed at one of the four bases in the state, ongoing training is a regular part of the job.
Once an air rescue crew boards the Bell 407, the slow churn of propellers mark the start of a new day or new mission. As the blades spin more quickly, they produce a tweeting sound, casting long shadows over grass bent over from the force of the wind generated by the aircraft taking off. The cab rumbles, and scanner traffic cuts in through hefty olive green headsets worn by the pilot and paramedic on board.
In moments, an aviation crew can be hovering above the rooftops of Northern Arizona University campus or swooping over Sunnyside.
Heppner said the team often receives calls from Sunnyside — folks reporting flashlights or signal fires on Mount Elden at night.
Rescuing lost, injured and overdue hikers is a big part of the job. After dark, they’re the only agency authorized to recover people by air in the Grand Canyon. The national park has its own helicopter for daytime operations, but it's teams like Heppner’s and Brookshire’s that perform rescues when the moon dominates the sky. For that purpose, the team has night vision goggles that amplify light by 9,000 times.
Brookshire said the crew can spot a pen light from several miles away.
Heppner flies over Woody Mountain Road where adventurers often get lost or stuck. Dipping beside cliff faces above Oak Creek, the team talks about rope rescues and what they call “technical rescues.”
A weighted cylinder is placed carefully inside a small circle by a helicopter pilot Saturday morning. The exercise is one of many skills that rescue helicopter pilots must practice routinely.
The team trains every 120 days on those tasks in particular. They practice clipping ropes to the side of the helicopter and repelling down, and point to the hookup for ropes on the bottom of the aircraft that can be used to attach specially designed harnesses and litters for lifting patients out of potentially deadly situations.
Sometimes a complicated rope rescue can take days, even with air support.
Heppner told a story about a climber who had been repelling in Insomnia Canyon and needed to be rescued.
“It took a long time to get ropes and rescuers into where the climber was. People think rescues take an hour or so, like they do on TV, but it can really depend on the location and the scale of the operation,” he said.
The crew responds to emergencies as hikers trek up Humphreys, too. The helicopter counts as a motorized vehicle, and as a result DPS Air Rescue is not allowed to land in wilderness areas without permission from and cooperation with the U.S. Forest Service.
Cresting over the peaks, the helicopter provides a bird’s eye view of land recently scarred by the Pipeline Fire. Charred remnants of trees and barren brown ground not yet colonized by pioneer species make for a bleak picture, but in a breath, the chopper is over the inner basin of the Peaks — a mostly untouched ocean of green sprayed with newly awakening fall colors.
The Air Rescue Unit provides support for other agencies during wildfires. They’re mostly available as a form of initial response when a forest fire is first spotted. Then, they’re there for wildland fire crews, lifting out anyone who might be injured.
Heppner said his team is also a resource when emergency evacuations are required, getting people out of immediate danger in the path of a blaze.
Floods followed fires this season, and the aviation crew had a role there, too. Trained to conduct rescues and extractions in rushing water, they’re at the ready to help people who are on foot or in their vehicle and washed away by rapidly rising water.
This year, the region has seen a lot of flooding, but Heppner said the public has seemed a lot more aware of the dangers associated with flash flood events. His team hasn’t had to conduct as many water rescues in the city and county as they have in other monsoon years.
As the seasons change, the team’s tasks shift a bit. They are prepared to go out in the snow to reach people stranded by the weather. Throughout the year, they may encounter sand (or quicksand, as Brookshire explained), and they’re ready to land where needed.
The diversity of terrain and tasks presents unique challenges for the crew. The highest call volume might come in Coconino County, where the population is sizeable and the outdoor wonders are likely to draw folks to wilderness areas, but the team serves the entire state — frequently fueling up in New Mexico when rescues or law enforcement operations take them north.
The mixed bag of tasks and duties are part of what makes this "the coolest paramedic job in the state,” Brookshire said. He joined after years working for Guardian on the ground as a paramedic.
For Heppner, the job was attractive enough to bring him out from Wyoming, where he was a pilot. Working on a wildland fire in Arizona, he learned about the DPS Air Rescue Unit and headed farther west for the opportunity.
Now, his days are spent saving lives, apprehending criminals, filling out paperwork, assisting with fires, training, pulling people out of canyons and flood waters and snow -- and never knowing exactly what call will come in next.
A helicopter pilot's helmet decorated with the Arizona flag sits in the seat of an Arizona DPS helicopter Saturday morning.
Sierra Ferguson can be reached at sierra.ferguson@lee.net.
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Dave Brookshire (left), Chuck Rush (middle) and Brad Heppner (right) stand in front of an Arizona DPS helicopter Saturday morning on their helipad at the Flagstaff Pulliam Airport.
Chuck Rush of Arizona DPS Air Rescue looks out the window of his helicopter Saturday morning as he practices picking up and moving a weighted cylinder hanging from a 150-foot rescue rope to and from small circles on the helipad at Flagstaff Pulliam Airport. This exercise is one of many skills that rescue helicopter pilots must practice routinely.
A weighted cylinder is placed carefully inside a small circle by a helicopter pilot Saturday morning. The exercise is one of many skills that rescue helicopter pilots must practice routinely.
A helicopter pilot's helmet decorated with the Arizona flag sits in the seat of an Arizona DPS helicopter Saturday morning.
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