CCSO has new mobile center

Cibola County emergency management coordinator Peggy Jordan and Undersheriff Johny Valdez climb down from inspecting the top of the new mobile command unit that was delivered to the sheriff's office Friday morning in Grants. [Photo by Jeff Jones/Independent]

By Jim Maniaci
Cibola County Bureau

GRANTS — Peggy Jordan presented the Cibola County Sheriff's Office with a going away present Friday morning, her last day as the emergency management coordinator. But the celebration of the $173,000 mobile command center's arrival was marred when the driver who delivered it died from a massive heart attack.

Around 8:15 a.m. Jordan was looking for the driver of the new motorhome-like vehicle, James Comstock, 55, of Burlington, Wis. He had driven the 20-ft. Freightliner 2006 chassis diesel-powered rig from the plant in Burlington in the southeastern part of the state. He made the 1,800-mile trip only to suffer a heart attack when he arrived in Grants.

Comstock also was scheduled to spend the day providing deputies with training in the proper use of the various equipment in the rig. Jordan found him unconscious on the vehicle's floor. But he had managed to stop the vehicle in the driveway behind the sheriff's office next to the county jail.

She quickly ran inside the sheriff's station and got Lt. Harry Hall and Sheriff Manuel Lujan, with all three providing cardio-pulmonary resuscitation until the ambulance crew arrived to take him to Cibola General Hospital. City Police Lt. Maxine Monte-Spidle and her husband, Sgt. James Spidle, heard the radio call and sped to the scene in separate units and assisted several men from the jail staff in loading him into the ambulance.

Undersheriff Johnny Valdez, who will succeed Lujan on Dec. 29 after eight years as his right-hand man, said Friday afternoon Comstock died from a massive heart attack shortly after it occurred.

Because a medical history was needed, his wife was notified soon after he was found.

About the new vehicle, Jordan exclaimed, "It's finally here, after two years of work!"

Sheriff Lujan commented, "It's a piece of equipment we've been wanting for a long time. We're very fortunate that Peggy Jordan made it happen." Jordan replied she couldn't have done it alone because the people who participated were the ones required by the federal Homeland Security Agency's Justice Department Office of Domestic Preparedness for the state of New Mexico to award the grant.

Jordan said Laguna Pueblo has applied for a mobile command post from Homeland Security Agency funds, but that there has been close coordination with the county. It would serve the eastern part of the county, which can easily be cut off by floods, traffic collisions or hazardous material spills.

She noted Cibola County's rig is the only self-propelled mobile command center which she knows of in the county. Grants City and Acoma Pueblo have mobile emergency command centers but they must be towed.

Valdez commented that the vehicle, once in service, will improve service to residents by a great degree. He explained that in the past when there was a major crime, such as a homicide, deputies had to be stationed at the scene round the clock, but had no facilities to help them.

"We'll store a lot of equipment for crime scene investigations and for hazardous materials incidents, such as on the Interstate. It's nice, very nice, a multiple-use, multi-purpose vehicle" the sheriff-elect said.

In addition to a pair of desks for radios and computers, it is equipped with storage cabinets, a security surveillance camera connected to monitors in the front and back rooms, a satellite dish, a pair of exterior flood lights, regular police lights and sirens, a tiny kitchen, small bathroom, and two separate battery systems which the generator can recharge.

The back room is a small conference room with dry erase boards and a video playing system which can copy the writing on the erase boards. The benches for the removable table can be used to sleep two people.

With an actual vehicle weight of less than 18,000 pounds, the new rig, which will feature the black and gold sheriff's office decal and stripes, doesn't require a Commercial Drivers License (CDL) to be used on the road.

To contact reporter Jim Maniaci in Grants, telephone 285-6184 or (505) 870-7775 (cell).