SoCal rescue ops

What travelers and Orange County natives may not know is that just across the parallel runways from the airline terminals, the Orange County Sheriff Department’s Aero Squadron Reserve Unit (ASRU) and Air Support Unit are ready and waiting to respond to any emergency requiring aerial assistance.

Orange County has a population of 3.2 million people, making it the ninth most populated of California’s 58 counties. It has a sprawling area of 948 square miles, 791 of which is land. With a combination of densely populated residential areas, coastline, lakes, canyons, and mountainous terrain, the OCSD ASRU along with the Air Support Unit is constantly working and training in ocean, cliffside, and mountain rescues as many areas are not accessible by fire vehicle personnel.

The department’s aviation history goes back more than 100 years, to 1923 with the formation of “The Flying Police of Santa Ana,” a police volunteer organization of 13 private pilots. In 1947, sheriff and private pilot James Musick founded the department’s volunteer pilot law enforcement air support squadron, or ASRU as it’s called today.

Seventy-seven years later, the ASRU continues to support Orange County Sheriff’s Department and neighboring law enforcement agencies through search and rescue support, aerial surveillance, radio communications, VIP and prisoner transport, extradition, and more.

The all-volunteer squadron has about 32 reserve deputy sheriffs and professional service responders. The reserve deputies are sworn peace officers with a gun and a badge, non-sworn professional service responders, and observers. All ASRU members are volunteers who donate hundreds of hours per year to the department, the county, and citizens of Orange County.

Volunteer pilots

Many of the deputy sheriffs and professional service responders are instrument-rated commercial pilots or higher with backgrounds in airline, corporate, or military flying. Many own or have access to the aircraft used for ASRU missions. All sworn reserve deputies must go through a background check and reserve police academy, and to fly, all pilot volunteers must pass the unit’s training and certification process.

Tim Reynolds, professional service responder pilot and retired airline captain, has been volunteering with the ASRU for 18 years and has been involved in prisoner, detective, and deputy transport, and flying radio repeaters in the Daher Kodiak 100. In 2006, he transported detectives to El Paso, Texas, to pick up a child who had been kidnapped and taken to Mexico.

“With Orange County sheriff’s, you do some unique things, go to very unique places. When time is critical that’s when they call us. My job is to fly; I don’t carry a gun, I don’t have a badge, I fly the airplane.”

Gary Stone, a professional service responder with the Aero Squadron, is a former professional pilot and works as a video producer. Looking for more opportunities to fly, Stone was introduced to the unit six years ago. As a professional service responder, he flies in support of the unit participating in training, fire, and flood watch missions in his 1972 Cessna 210 that he’s owned for almost 30 years.

The unit’s commander, Reserve Lt. Steve Brown, a captain at Southwest Airlines, learned of the ASRU from an article in The Orange County Register.

“I started flying when I was 19 and got my private pilot rating when I was 20,” Brown said. “Like most pilots after my first flight, I was pretty much hooked, and I just had that love and passion for aviation. I am fortunate that I get to kind of do both sides in professional aviation with Southwest and this with the sheriff’s department.”

“I was 20 at the time, and they said, ‘Well you got to be 21 to be a reserve deputy,’ so I waited, got my instrument rating, at the time you had to have a private and instrument rating, and I came back, applied, and then about a year and a half later I got on to the unit, I have been doing this now for almost 32 years.”

The squadron’s fleet are all privately owned and run the gamut from single-engine fixed-wing piston aircraft like the Cessna 172 and 206 to turboprop single- and twin-engine aircraft like the Kodiak and Cessna 310 and 414 and even business class jets. All costs associated with ownership and maintenance of the aircraft are paid for by the owner, and the department shares the fuel costs with the owner.

Having a roster of mission-specific fixed-wing aircraft ready at a moment’s notice means the department and county can operate in and out of more rural areas; support search and rescue, firefighting, fire, and flood watch operations; provide surveillance for pre-warrants, SWAT raids, drug interdiction; and even transport high-risk prisoners. Privately owned transportation also allows all law enforcement officers to carry weapons on board, except pepper spray (for obvious reasons).

It’s often much safer to transport high-profile criminals via private aircraft than to transport them via commercial airline or a van that could become the target of a breakout. Over the years, the ASRU has been part of multiple high-profile prisoner transport missions that include flying death row inmates from San Quentin prison and even transporting witnesses to testify against Charles Manson in the early 1970s.

The fleet also transports evidence like drugs and weapons, which allows the department to maintain a chain of evidence using sworn personnel. This helps prevent accusations of evidence tampering. “On the lighter side, we do a lot of search and rescue,” Brown explained. “Our aircraft are equipped with repeaters, airborne 800-megahertz repeaters, so when our search and rescue crews are down in a canyon where there’s no communications, we launch and orbit our aircraft, so now we have communications down on the ground.”

In addition to his volunteer work as the OCSD ASRU unit commander and career with the airlines, Brown is also dedicated to introducing young people to the world of aviation and law enforcement.

“I take great interest in helping and mentoring younger kids and getting them involved in aviation and or in law enforcement,” Brown said. A lot of times when we come here and we park our aircraft at Orange County Airport there’s sometimes three or four kids standing over here on the fence just like I did, you know, when I was like five years old, like everybody else does, so we go hand them stickers and that kind of thing, and that’s really part of the joy, you know, the happy joyfulness you get out of doing this type of work.”

The Huey surveys the Crystal Cove area (left) and Emerald Point (right) on the California coast.

Helicopter unit

The ASRU works in tandem with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department Helicopter Air Support Unit. Unlike the civilian-owned fixed-wing fleet, the helicopters are owned by the department.

The Air Support Bureau/Search and Rescue Unit currently operates five helicopters: an AS350 B2 AStar and two AS350 B3e AStar patrol helicopters (Duke 1, 2, and 3) and two UH-1H Huey medium-lift helicopters (Duke 6 and 7) used for search and rescue and fire rescue operations. All the helicopters have hoisting capabilities. Their call sign “Duke” comes from the long history and contributions that actor John Wayne gave to the OCSD and the county. He was an honorary deputy and good friend with Musick. OCSD is the only law enforcement agency in the county that can provide paramedic and advanced life support services.

To fly helicopters with the department, individuals must be a patrol deputy for several years. After flight training, pilots complete about a year of in-house training. It requires about 1,500 hours of patrol flying the AStar prior to doing what the department calls “special operations missions” like search and rescue and firefighting in the Huey.

Chief Pilot Patrick Garcia, a Huey pilot with the department, got his start with the California Army National Guard. “I flew for them for approximately 10 years and then at the same time I was working with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. I ultimately left the California National Guard and was assigned to air support five years ago here.”

“Search and rescues offer a lot of exciting opportunities to go on different calls,” Garcia said. “Not every call is the same—you get to help different people in the county whether it’s a stranded hiker, someone who’s dehydrated, or someone who broke an ankle mountain biking, we get to see all the different kinds of rescues.”

Sgt. Everardo Arrendondo, a patrol pilot in the AStar, started flying just after high school in fixed-wing aircraft. He flew corporate aviation for a few years before joining the sheriff’s department; two years ago, he was selected to join the Air Support Bureau.

“I love this helicopter,” Arrendondo said. “It’s the biggest platform for law enforcement aviation. It’s got lots of power, lots of authority, we can get anywhere in this county in about 10 to 15 minutes.”

“The flying part is great,” Arrendondo said. “We get to fly low and slow, low and fast, we get to chase criminals, help our partners on the ground stay safe, that’s probably the best part of what I do. If you’re in law enforcement and you want to be an aviation, continue to push through whatever you need to get through to get to the unit. It took me a couple tries. I was here once as a deputy, and luckily, I was able to come back as a sergeant, so if it’s something you want, then try to get it.”

AOPA’s production crew was invited on a ride-along in the department’s AStar to observe Duke 6’s training exercise in the mountains. The crew’s professionalism and care was obvious from the start as we went through our passenger briefing. They explained how to open and close the doors on AStar in flight, how to clip into the harness anchors, and more. We were also told that because they were on duty, if they were to get a call for a pursuit, we would be along for the ride for as long as it takes. From the moment the skids left the tarmac it was clear the pilots were mission focused, precision machines, flying up and forward with little movement side-to-side. Before heading to the mountains to join the Huey, we flew toward a densely populated neighborhood to put on a show for school children waiting below. Did you know that patrol helicopters have sirens? I was unaware of this until the moment they pressed the button that would project the audible siren into the sky. A large screen on the instrument panel showed a clear image of the students below hopping up and down and waving below. After about two orbits, the Huey was ready for us to join them in the mountains.

The teamwork displayed by both the AStar and Huey was something to behold. I watched in awe as the crew of Duke 6 maintained one of the most unwavering hovers I’d ever seen, while hoisting their crew to and from the mountainous and rocky terrain below. Inside our aircraft, the pilots in the AStar worked in tandem, speaking to each other about power settings, control inputs, traffic, terrain, speed, and more. Once finished with their hoisting exercise, our flight of two headed to the beach to fly along the coastline, and once again I was in enamored at the sight of a deputy standing on the skid of the Huey waving at beachgoers, boaters, and beachfront mansion residents. It was an incredibly humbling experience to see these crews in their natural habitat, doing what they do for their community every day.

At the same time, Duke 7 and its crew were participating in firefighting water drop operations using the department’s 300-gallon detachable water tank. The airport fire burned over 23,000 acres and destroyed more than 150 structures in the Santiago Peak and Modjeska Peak areas.

The Air Support Unit is continuing to innovate with plans to replace its Huey helicopters with more advanced IFR-certified medium-size helicopters to be used for search and rescue, firefighting water drops, and patrol operations. The new aircraft will help expand the capabilities of the unit by allowing the team to operate in the low ceilings and poor visibility often associated with coastal Southern California. 

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