A Life Less Ordinary

by Jaime Hale 

She is 23, single. She is an Aviation Maintenance Technician Second Class for the United States Coast Guard, and has been in the service of her country for almost five years. She is a definite minority in Coast Guard aviation, which is comprised of only 3% women. She currently fixes and flies as part of a 3-4 person aircrew, on HH-65 "Dolphin" helicopters. "They’re the Ferraris of helicopters," she says, " sleek, fast, and always needing an engine change." (Laughs) "Too bad you can’t fix people that easily."

You can’t save everybody. That’s what you have to keep telling yourself, when you learn of a man and his two young children found floating just under the surface of southern Lake Michigan. Or about the guy and his eight-year old son who were just out for a jetski joyride on a beautiful weekend. The man turned up alive, his son didn’t. Even when you’re not on the flights that search for these people it still affects you, makes you think about the precariousness of life.

When I first joined the Coast Guard, starry-eyed and idealistic, I was assigned to a smallboat station on the beautiful and sometimes ferocious Oregon Coast. We were a twenty-one person crew, comprised of eighteen men and three women. The average age was twenty-four. Our "smallboats" were 44’ Motor Lifeboats (called simply "forty-fours"); sturdy boats that were self-righting and self-bailing. They were designed to be able to take a severe beating from the sea and still return their crews safely home. We took pride in the fact that in 25 years of service, nobody had ever been killed on a forty-four.

I was blissfully lucky during my two-year tenure in Oregon; all of our rescues were successful ones. We even did a couple that ended up on national TV, on shows such as "Rescue 911." I learned a healthy respect for the ocean, and a sly disrespect for the tourists with their naiveté and propensity to get themselves into dangerous situations. Many times each summer we’d rescue some silly tourist from some rocks after the tide came in and cut them off from shore. But all my stories of Depoe Bay and Newport have happy endings. Despite the incredibly bad weather we often had to deal with, our training and care always paid off in the end.

Shortly after leaving Oregon for aviation maintenance school in North Carolina, I learned of a tragedy at one of our sister stations. On one dark and stormy evening, while trying to find a boat that had radioed a distress call, three of my fellow "Coasties" lost their lives to the wiles of the Pacific. Their forty-four had been flipped over several times in the rough surf, killing three of the four-man crew. The news was tough to take, because it made me face the reality of the dangers of the job I had been doing. It could easily have been me on that boat, tumbling in the surf. It could have been me.

After school, I was assigned to Kodiak, Alaska, as the first female ever in the history of "Alpat." Alpat, short for Alaska Patrol, is a Coast Guard Dolphin helicopter unit whose sole responsibility is to deploy with the cutters that patrol the waters of the Bering Sea and the North Pacific. Two pilots, four mechanics, and a helicopter accompany each cutter on patrol for 35-60 days. The cramped conditions on a 378’ High Endurance Cutter do not make for the ideal "Alaskan cruise ship." In fact, they’re commonly referred to as "big, white needles of death." These cutters continuously patrol "The Line," an imaginary line in the Bering halfway between Alaska and Russia, that was drawn by a treaty to resolve territorial conflicts. If any foreign fishing vessel crosses into U.S. waters, the Coast Guard turns them back, politely or otherwise.

Most of the guys in Alpat had little or no experience of working with women when I showed up. I felt sometimes as though I was a test subject in someone’s sociology experiment. I managed through very, very hard work to win the friendship and respect of many, but there were still some who I knew talked about me behind my back, and said I only accomplished the things I did because I was a girl. It hurt…but I grew a thick skin, and overcame my fear of confronting people. I eventually "jumped the fence," and started working on the HH-60 Jayhawk, and finally found success and recognition for all the hard work that I did.

Fishing in Alaska is the number one most hazardous job in the United States, particularly the crab fisheries. The Bering Sea is one of the most treacherous bodies of water in the world. Combine this with the ability to make hundreds of thousands of dollars on one fishing trip, and the time of year crab season happens to fall (winter) and you have the recipe for certain disaster.

We would fly in nearly any weather conditions, because when a boat went down, or someone was seriously injured, usually we were their only hope of survival. Out in the Bering, and in the Gulf of Alaska, weather conditions of near-zero visibility, sixty mile-per-hour winds, and forty-foot seas were common. Our helos have de-icing capabilities, and millions of dollars worth of avionics designed to aid pilots and crews in all situations. However, they are only machines and can fail, especially with all the extremes we put them through.

People can fail too. I think it’s really a testament to the strength and quality of our people that we can fly in such extraordinary conditions, stuff that anyone else would have to be crazy to go out in. Even so, it’s very rare that we fail to the point of one of our planes going down.

Even when you don’t personally fly on a SAR (search-and-rescue) case, you still feel involved, you’re an important part of all the work and countless hours it takes to keep those planes flying. You feel personally responsible, in part, to the success (or failure) of the mission.

Here in Michigan, I often hear the guys at work complain how "slow" it is, not like Kodiak, or Cape Cod, or Miami. We just don’t have the SAR that other units have. I guess it’s one of those "the grass is greener…" things. I for one am relieved to be here, the weather’s not so bad, and the terrain’s not so rugged and wild. The Great Lakes have their storms, to be sure, but nothing like the Bering. I have been enjoying the slower pace very much…we get to do other things besides SAR. I’ve been in an airshow down in Indiana, I’ve flown all over the UP and over to Wisconsin. I got to spend a day at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame down in Cleveland while my pilots were at a meeting there. I’ve even been on "pot patrols" where we spotted over $60,000 worth of marijuana, which was subsequently seized by the police. You don’t have time to do all this stuff when you’re always flying search-and-rescue.

It is the most wonderful feeling in the world to help save someone’s life. But the stress of it can get to you after a while. I work with guys who refuse to fly anymore. They just got to that point where it was too much.

There have been times at my job when I’ve had my heart in my throat and I wonder if any of it is worth all the trouble. I often wonder if the people we save accomplish anything with the second chance at life they have. Do they appreciate what they have a little more? Do they perhaps spend more time with loved ones? Do they strive to make the world a little better? I’d like to think so, but I suppose I’ll never know. These survivors, this job, have given me an appreciation for life that I wouldn’t have otherwise. All this, and a paycheck too. Amazing.