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          Front Page  sage

Monday, July 5, 2004

Always a Cop

By Aurelio Sanchez
Of the Journal
    'I should have been dead,' says APD Sgt. Carol Oleksak. But here Salad Fork Ranch— with the help of Blackjack the llama, Lizzie the quarter horse and others— she has found the road to recovery.
    Sgt. Carol Oleksak: "P.D., this is Sam-36. Please be advised I am getting out of my vehicle in the parking lot at Walgreen's."
    Dispatch: "10-4, Sam-36."
    Albuquerque police Sgt. Carol Oleksak had just radioed to dispatch that she was getting out of her car. Seconds later, a startled "oof!" on her radio signaled she had just been shot.
    A transient mental patient had wrestled Oleksak's Colt .45-caliber handgun and shot her point blank in the shoulder and head.
    Oleksak, 50, survived the attack, nearly a year ago to the date (July 7, 2003). Doctors, her family, and even Mayor Martin Chávez describe her recovery as "astonishing" and "miraculous."
    But as the first anniversary of the shooting nears, the 15-year APD veteran isn't thinking about retirement.
    She's thinking about how soon she can get back to being what she's always wanted to be: a police officer.
    Yet, Oleksak is not the same woman who lay on the pavement bleeding that blistering hot night.
    Officer Anthony Sedler: "10-83 (officer in trouble), a guy with a gun, a white male wearing a black shirt, jeans...Shots fired! He's walking eastbound on Central!"
    Oleksak's Salad Fork Ranch is a long way from Central Avenue— a world away from Albuquerque's mean streets. The orneriest characters out here are coyotes, but they're kept at bay by Oleksak's imposing Anatolian shepherd dogs.
    The ranch lies along U.S. 550 and N.M. 4, the road to Jemez Springs. It's where Oleksak finds peace. Here, her mop-top miniature horses frolic. Here, a pair of white llamas, rescued by Oleksak from a traveling circus, prance alongside inquisitive quarter horses. Gossipy turkeys and chickens chatter. Shy pygmy goats and a few impertinent sheep complete her menagerie.
    Salad Fork is 22 acres in San Ysidro, an old village northwest of Bernalillo with vistas of high desert and surrounding hills dotted with chamisa and juniper. This is where SAGE Magazine caught up with her, meeting with her several times this spring.
    Sadie, one of her Anatolian shepherd dogs who looks like "Old Yeller," helps protect her animals. Another guard dog, Rusty, barks lustily from his pen. She imported the dogs from Turkey.
    "In the evenings, you can see the coyotes trotting up and down the fence line," she says. "They're not inclined to come any further once they see the dogs."
    Officer Sedler: "Shots fired! He's walking eastbound, carrying a black backpack, 36 is down!"
    Oleksak doesn't remember being down. She doesn't remember being shot. Her first memory is of waking up in the hospital and asking about her animals. She credits the animals in large part for her recovery. They need her, she says. They keep her busy.
    Two miniature horses, which Oleksak calls her "little bitty ones," strut up to the panel wire fence to see what's up on this spring day. "Joy" nickers as Oleksak reaches through the fence to pull out tufts of her winter coat. "Trinket," sporting a Beatlesesque mop-top, sidles up, too.
    "It's springtime, it's time for this stuff to come out," Oleksak says, yanking tufts of hair from Trinket. Oleksak says she might get a hitch and miniature wagon so she can show the horses in parades.
    Lanky and wiry, Oleksak has close cropped black hair streaked with gray, topping a sharply angular face. She talks fast, sometimes too fast, and her green cap, blue jeans and striped cowboy shirt give her a look of a lady truck driver or a hard-working ranch hand.
    Just 14 when she got her first horse, Oleksak is an accomplished horsewoman. Two years learning about horse racing in Oregon turned into a dozen, and she became a jockey and trainer.
    After spending a summer in Ruidoso in the late 1980s, she decided to come to New Mexico. She bought the ranch, then just a desolate patch of dirt, and for the first couple of years lived in a beat-up trailer while her house was being built.
    She joined APD, starting in the horse patrol, then as a code enforcement officer.
    Dispatch: "All area officers 10-8 (in service), we need you to step on it, to the Walgreen's Central and Girard. Any units en route, I have an 83!"
    Oleksak doesn't remember fighting for her life as she was bleeding on the sidewalk in front of Walgreens. The only thing she remembers when she woke in the hospital after the shooting was that her animals had not been fed.
    One of her quarter horses, a beautiful well-muscled mare named Lizzie, ambles to a water tank in her corral, followed closely by a white llama named "Blackjack," an unfriendly sort who regards a visitor with a menacing glare and pinned-back ears. Compared to the bellicose Blackjack, Lizzie is downright neighborly.
    "I've always loved animals," Oleksak says. "They're like my family.
    "They keep me going. When I get home from work, no matter how tired, or how bored, or how happy I am, I have to take care of my animals. They need me."
    Not as much, perhaps, as she needs them. She offers, hesitantly, that they helped her through a particularly tough time about five months after the shooting.
    "There was a time, and I hate to say this, that maybe I was looking at suicide here," she says.
    Her family and friends in the department had suggested she retire, and she at first was inclined to go along. But the more she thought about it, the more it didn't make sense to her. She couldn't fathom giving up something she'd tried so hard to achieve, and she had a hard time seeing any meaning to the rest of her life if she did retire.
    "What would I do for the next 30 years?" she asks. "I'm not married, I've got no kids, what am I going to do for the rest of my life?"
    Dispatch: "All units in the area, I need you to step on it. Unit 21, I need you to step on it. All other units I need you to go 10-8, Central and Girard at the Walgreen's."
    Born in Greenbelt, Md., Oleksak is the oldest of four daughters. Her dad worked for the federal government, and her mom was a music teacher. Oleksak's childhood hero was 007, the suave, sophisticated, fearless British double agent played then in the movies by Sean Connery.
    When she was about 13, the family moved to Portland, Ore. After high school, she got a degree in administration of justice at Portland State University.
    Even as a young child, she was interested in criminal justice. She remembers going to the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., to learn about fingerprinting. She remembers reading "The Fugitive" and later watching the TV series of the same name starring David Janssen.
    Officer Sedler: "He is armed, on the south side of the street." (Heavy breathing).
    Her modest, ranch-style adobe house reflects her taste for the archaic and provincial, the decor an eclectic mix of New Mexico, Navajo and pueblo styles. Her two cats, Felix and Garfield, lounge on the living room floor near a wood stove.
    Under the concrete floor are hot water pipes that radiate heat. Mounted on the wall is an English sheep's head, once a member of her menagerie. Pine vigas as wide as a horse's chest support a tongue-and-groove cedar ceiling.
    Scattered throughout the house are Navajo rugs, antiques and horse saddles. An elk-antler chandelier hangs from the ceiling. Her bookcase has volumes like "The Civil War," "The FBI Story," and "Great Battles of the American Nation." It also displays about a dozen Tony Hillerman novels.
    "I'm into history," she understates, though she discloses that since the shooting, she can only read at third-grade level.
    After the shooting, Oleksak also had trouble hearing. She had brain surgery, but bullet fragments remain in her skull. Recently, she had a steel plate put in her head and bone fragments removed to improve her hearing.
    Gradually, Oleksak has increased her reading aptitude through physical, occupational and speech therapy.
    "I've been doing better and better," Oleksak says.
    Dispatch: "Units, use 48 (caution) he (suspect) has shot; he's still armed with a gun, we're looking for a (suspect) on foot in white shirt and pants."
    As Oleksak speaks, she abruptly stops occasionally in midsentence, searching for the right word. She discloses that since the shooting, she can't remember some words. She admonishes herself to "slow down, Carol," so her speech can catch up to her thoughts. She uses a technique of association, saying, for example, the word "kids" out loud to remind herself of the word "Boy Scouts."
    Oleksak remembers going on ride-alongs with the Portland police. But she also remembers being told that girls don't become cops. Better for her to be a dispatcher, she was told.
    She instead entered a pre-veterinary program at Oregon State University. And though she loved animals then too, her dream was still to become a police officer, and it wouldn't die. She switched to Portland State to get a degree in criminal justice.
    "I have just always, always wanted to be a cop," she says, repeating the word always for emphasis.
    Officer Sedler:"Call Kelly's (Brew Pub). Advise everyone in the place to get down!"
    APD Chief Gil Gallegos said Oleksak's return to police work depends on her condition and capabilities.
    "We're open to her coming back," he said, "but we want it to occur when she's doing a lot better because to us, it's her health that is most paramount."
    He added, "Her value as an officer and sergeant has been very good. She's a very knowledgeable sergeant."
    Oleksak worked the Southeast Heights, which includes Nob Hill and an area commonly known as the "War Zone," south of Central and east of San Mateo to Louisiana and Wyoming.
    The area is plagued with poverty and crime, but has a fusion of immigrants with diverse ethnic backgrounds, including many Vietnamese and Cubans.
    "There have been a lot of problems there, but I wanted to see if I could help solve some of them," she says. "I like to see things changing."
    She had been promoted to sergeant just a year before the shooting and was optimistic about tackling persistent problems of drugs, burglaries and vagrancy.
    Dispatch: "All units, use 48 (caution). He is armed."
    Her shift on July 7, 2003, began just like any other day, with minor calls. Oleksak responded to a dispatch about 7:30 p.m. that someone had broken out the rear window of a car at the 7-11 on University and Central SE.
    The 911 caller reported that the suspect, described as an Asian, was walking east on Central. Oleksak stopped the man in the Walgreens parking lot at Central and Girard SE and had him put his hands on the roof of her car while she frisked him.
    Suddenly the man whirled around and knocked her on the side of the head. She fell to the ground. He kicked her and ripped her gun and holster off. She says the entire episode took about 30 seconds.
    Witnesses at the time say they heard at least two shots, and then they saw her try to get up from the sidewalk when she was shot again twice, the last shot striking her on the left side of her head, ripping off her ear and part of her skull. The man then ran east on Central, until he was confronted by other officers at Wellesley and Central, near Kelly's Brew Pub. The suspect, identified as Duc Mihn Pham, raised Olekak's gun at officers and was shot dead.
    Dispatch: All officers 10-8 (in service) to 10-20 (location) at Kelly's."
    Oleksak says she's listened to the dispatch tape endlessly, trying to figure out how she could have prevented it.
    "It all happened so quickly and so suddenly, and it was so unexpected that there was nothing I could have done," she says. "He rushed me, knocked me down and 10 seconds later I was dead... or I should have been dead."
    Officer Sedler: Did you call Kelly's? Advise people to get down!"
    Ironically, as the incident unfolded on Central Avenue, Oleksak's mother, Loleta, flipped on her television and heard that a female officer from the Southeast command had been shot.
    "I called my daughter, Lynn (Scott), and told her I thought it was Carol," Loleta says. Scott is an APD officer working on the West Side. Scott called her back and verified it was Carol. Loleta met Scott at the hospital. They and many APD officers conducted a vigil during the four-hour surgery at University of New Mexico Hospital.
    "It was in God's hands, but it never entered my mind that she wouldn't make it," Loleta says.
    Carol displayed an instinct for survival early on, Loleta says. As a child, she had corrective surgery for a congenital defect. She completed her rehabilitation at a much younger age than other children, Loleta says.
    Loleta says she wasn't surprised when Carol told her she wanted to be a police officer.
    "Carol has always lived on the cutting edge," she says. "I learned early to put her in God's hands. He had to protect her, because there are times parents can't."
    If Loleta had her "druthers," she'd prefer that Carol not return to patrol duty. But she says she understands her daughter's drive and desire.
    As for the man who shot her daughter, she holds no grudge against him, nor does the rest of the family, Loleta says.
    "I don't see how we can hold a grudge," she says. "He wasn't really in control of his faculties, and I think we have to forgive. It's how we've been taught, and Carol, too."
    Officer Sedler:"He (suspect) is shot. I am 56 (officer arriving) at Kelly's. He is down."
    Oleksak has a detached, matter-of-fact attitude toward the shooting: "It happened, and now I have to go on."
    Since then, Oleksak's learned that the man who shot her had been arrested up to 50 times on charges ranging from breaking and entering to burglary, larceny and shoplifting. She learned he had schizophrenia and a past brain injury. But because he was not shown to be dangerous, he wasn't committed for treatment.
    Oleksak has become an advocate for changes in New Mexico law that treatment be given to mentally incompetent people based on need, rather than on the danger they present. In January, she testified before the state Legislature in Santa Fe.
    "I don't know if it would be cheaper, but it would be better if we took care of these people before they get in a situation where they hurt someone or hurt themselves," she says.
    She adds, "It happened, it happened so suddenly, and he's dead. Realistically, we should have been taking care of this person. He was just crazy. He wasn't mean."
    Dispatch: "10-4 (OK), are you 10-4? Unit...I need to know, are you 10-4?
    As Oleksak refills a water trough, Blackjack, the temperamental llama, purses his lips, as if to spit. She says Blackjack's been in a bad mood all day and nearly spit at her earlier that morning. Then Oleksak becomes thoughtful, and after a long pause, she says, hesitantly, that she was five months into her recovery when she began to slip into a deep depression. Everyone had been urging her to retire.
    But she finally realized in February, as she was returning from a lobbying trip to Santa Fe, that she didn't want to retire. She wanted to go back to work. Since then, Oleksak has been explaining to people why she wants to go back.
    "I think now they understand, at least I hope they do."
    A persistent wind rolls off surrounding high desert hills. Oleksak removes her sunglasses to rub her eyes. She adds, after another pause, that if she does go back, it probably won't be in full uniform, and it probably won't be as a beat cop.
    "But I can be a detective, or I can be in code enforcement," she says, adding that she hasn't given up hope of returning to her old job.
    "I just want to go back to work. That's all I care about."
    Officer Sedler: "That's 10-4, all other 56 (officers) are 10-4, except for ... (unintelligible) I think he just killed an officer."
    Her doctors tell her it will be at least the summer of 2005 before she will be able to return to work, she said, but she's hopeful it will be much sooner.
    Mayor Martin Chavez said Oleksak exemplifies the best of her field. "Our police officers love what they do; they don't do it for the money. It's an important part of who Carol is."
    "Carol Oleksak is truly living proof that miracles do occur," he added.
    Oleksak's been back to the parking lot where she found faint marks of her blood on the sidewalk. She doubts she will ever remember the shooting.
    A lot of people join the department and then leave after becoming disillusioned, she says. But not her. She survived, she says, because she's got something yet to do, and she believes it's being a cop.
    "I've always wanted to be a police officer. I don't know how else to say it."