(NBC K5) – She’s only been patrolling the streets of Port Angeles for a month. Officer JJ Smith is still getting used to her beat.
“I definitely have more experience in the mountains than on the streets of Port Angeles,” she said with a bright smile.
While she is new to law enforcement, Smith is an accomplished mountain climber.
She and some friends set out to summit Mount Saint Helens over the weekend when bad weather started rolling in. Several of the people in her party turned back, but Smith and a friend carried on.
A short time later, they encountered another group of hikers who were in trouble.
“We could hear two of the team members telling a lady to sit down and get off her feet, but she wasn’t listening,” said Smith.
Smith didn’t need her police training to tell her the woman was in serious distress. Her knees had locked up and she couldn’t walk. Smith took an extra pair of pants from her pack, and the rookie cop made a veteran move.
“I took my knife out, cut my pants in half, kind of made a makeshift brace for her legs,” she said.
Then, in visibility of less than 50 feet, Smith and her climbing partner started sliding the woman down the mountain. Although risky at 6,000 feet, the slide turned out to be the easy part.
“When we couldn’t glissade, we literally would pull her by her coat,” said the officer. “She would just sit on her butt, kick her feet out with a plastic bag over her legs. We would just grab her by the hands and pull her.”
They did that for more than 2,000 feet until they got the woman to safety.
“It was definitely difficult, especially when we had to pull her uphill,” said Smith, “but we had to get her to where the snowmobiles could reach her.”
Smith never made it to the summit that day, but she believes she was on a sort of “higher calling.”
