Tuesday, February 23, 2021
THe ObserVer — 5A
SHERIFF
Continued from Page 1A
Rasmussen, including
that he created a deal in
2011 to provide Elgin with
police services, for which
he received more than
$7,000 while still serving as
sheriff.
The DOJ found any
wrongdoing on Ramussen’s
part was beyond the statute
of limitations, but the report
helped knock him out of
the race, easing the path for
Bowen to cruise to victory
in November.
Bowen credited Ras-
mussen for making
improvements to the agency
over his four terms as
sheriff, such as bringing
on Molly, the sheriff’s
office K-9 unit. But Bowen
also said he was not inter-
ested in talking much about
Rasmussen or his legacy.
Bowen, however, seemed
to embrace a different
thinking about his role as
sheriff compared to his
predecessor.
“I keep my faith to the
office and loyalty to the
office,” Bowen said, “rather
than the man.”
What’s right now
The new sheriff has
immediate needs to address
and campaign promises
to fulfill, including oper-
ating the sheriff’s office in
a more transparent fashion
to rebuild some trust with
the public.
The sheriff’s office has
16 certified patrol officers,
and that includes Bowen,
and 13 corrections officers.
Bowen said he is working
to expand that with another
detective, a patrol deputy
Alex Wittwer/The Observer
Union County Sheriff Cody Bowen points out a younger version of himself he keeps
pinned to a bulletin board in his office. To the right hangs an index card from 1993 show-
ing a citation he received in his youth, a reminder he says serves to keep him grounded.
and a corrections deputy
before the next fiscal year.
He said the candidates for
each position are going
through background checks
now.
The hiring committee
that recommended the can-
didates, he said, included
members of the district
attorney’s office and two
La Grande-based non-
profits that work closely
with law enforcement: the
Mount Emily Safe Center,
a child abuse intervention
center, and Shelter From the
Storm, which helps victims
of interpersonal violence
and sexual assault. Bowen
said having these organi-
zations participate in the
hiring process for the sher-
iff’s office is a way to be
more transparent and build
better connections with the
community.
Team building is another
area of focus. Bowen says
little things can make a dif-
ference, such as showing
staff a positive attitude.
“Take care of your
people,” he said. “Be nice.
Be pleasant to be around.
Be flexible.”
That’s a tone he said he
strives to set each morning
when he comes to work
and what he wants the staff
to exemplify. Whether
someone is a patrol deputy
or works in the jail, they all
serve the community and are
working with the same goal
of public safety, he said, and
every time they’re out in the
public they’re representatives
of the sheriff’s office.
Funding and future
plans
Since taking the post,
Bowen said, he has spent
a chunk of time going
TOLL
Continued from Page 1A
handshakes and commuted
to work in crowded public
transportation. Children
were still at school in actual
classrooms. Hollywood
icon Tom Hanks walked the
red carpet at the Oscars, not
knowing a month later he
and his wife would contract
COVID-19. Baseball spring
training drew the usual
crowds, without a face
mask in sight.
But an ominous cruise
ship with COVID-infected
passengers circled off the
coast of California. Within
weeks, the Grand Princess
— and the initial efforts
by the state and the federal
governments to bar it from
coming ashore — became
a symbol of America’s mis-
guided belief that it could
keep the disease out.
Words like shutdown
and social distancing were
not yet part of our vocab-
ulary in those early days.
Few of us wore masks as we
stood in long lines to stock-
pile groceries and cleared
the shelves of toilet paper.
Heartbreak and
despair arrive
Nightmarish scenes we
had witnessed in China and
Italy reached America, and
the nation snapped to atten-
tion. Nursing homes near
Seattle became the sites of
the first deadly U.S. out-
break. We watched the
elderly and frail suffer
alone: An octogenarian
with COVID-19, stretched
out in a hospital bed,
blowing her family a kiss
through a window.
The World Health Orga-
nization declared the crisis
a pandemic in March,
and everything from col-
lege campuses to corpo-
rate headquarters cleared
out. The NCAA announced
that the rite of spring for so
many Americans — its col-
lege basketball tournament
— would be played before
Jae C. Hong/AP Photo
Nurse Joselito Florendo administers the COVID-19 vaccine
to Michael Chesler on Jan. 22, 2021, at a mass vaccination
site in the parking lot of Six Flags Magic Mountain in Va-
lencia, California.
largely empty arenas, and
then abruptly canceled it.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the
nation’s leading expert on
infectious disease, became
a household name in daily
news conferences. When
he estimated in March that
100,000 to 200,000 Amer-
icans could die from the
virus, horror was tempered
by total disbelief. Presi-
dent Donald Trump touted
hydroxychloroquine as a
“game changer” but med-
ical experts disagreed.
American hustle and
bustle came to a standstill
as hotspots exploded across
the country. The typically
jam-packed Los Angeles
freeways emptied into eerie
stretches of open road. The
lights stayed on in Times
Square but its legendary
energy and crowds van-
ished. April felt like Arma-
geddon in New York City;
ambulances constantly
blared down deserted
streets, body bags were
forklifted into refrigerated
trucks that parked outside
hospitals where they served
as makeshift morgues and
stark symbols of death.
Aerial footage captured
by AP showed another
unthinkable sight: a mass
grave in New York City
for unclaimed bodies of
COVID-19 victims. Workers
in hazmat suits were seen
lowering wooden coffins,
stacked on top of each other,
into deep trenches dug in a
potter’s field off the coast
of the Bronx.
We marveled at the her-
oism of health care workers
and tried to show our grati-
tude; New Yorkers clapped
and cheered and banged
pots each night at 7 p.m.
to honor those doctors
and nurses. We mourned
the nonstop trauma they
absorbed on the frontlines.
Afraid and exhausted,
they battled to save the sick
and vowed not to let vic-
tims die alone. Inside hos-
pital rooms, where countless
patients had no family to
comfort them, the grim task
of offering solace fell to the
overworked and emotion-
ally drained doctors, nurses
and hospital chaplains.
Some held back tears as
they offered non-stop com-
fort and prayers. “There’s
so much death right now,
it piles up on you, it feels
heavy,” said a chaplain in
Georgia.
America becomes
epicenter
The reality that America
had become the global epi-
through the $4.5 million
budget the sheriff’s office
operates on.
“Trying to figure out
where we’re at, where we’re
over, where we’re short,”
Bowen said.
He said when it comes
time to present a budget
proposal for the 2021-22
fiscal year to the county
commissioners, he will ask
for a funding increase. He
said that’s not about asking
for extras but asking for the
money the sheriff’s office
needs to operate. He also
said he sees opportuni-
ties for funding sources the
sheriff’s office can tap into.
Bowen also is eying
what to do with an aging
building.
“The building is falling
down around us,” he said.
“We are maxed out on
space. We share space with
La Grande Police Depart-
center of modern history’s
deadliest pandemic crashed
into focus.
Life moved online:
everything from work and
school to doctors appoint-
ments, birthday parties,
weddings — and funerals.
It became clear that no
one was safe. But some
were at far greater risk.
Racial disparities in who
contracted the virus played
out across America as data
showed that Black and
Latino people were dispro-
portionately affected by the
virus and were dispropor-
tionately dying of it.
Catching COVID-19
became just one of many
concerns as the pandemic
shut society, forcing busi-
nesses to close and unem-
ployment to skyrocket.
Paychecks shrank or disap-
peared altogether for mil-
lions, and harrowing por-
traits of hunger emerged
across the country as
Americans lined up at food
banks, many for the first
time in their lives.
Science mixed with pol-
itics, deepening a national
divide and adding to the
stress of a nation over-
whelmed. Protests against
racial injustice sent people,
most of them wearing
masks, into the streets.
Amid the upside-down-
ness of life, we sought nor-
malcy. Restaurants in some
places hung their “open”
signs and refused to abide
by stay-at-home orders, wel-
coming customers willing
to dine inside. Others came
up with creative al fresco
options. In the parking lot
of one California restaurant,
ment and dispatch. ...
There’s mold, it leaks.”
He compared the facility
to an old car. At some point
the maintenance is not
worth the cost to keep it
running.
But how soon the
county can find another
building to serve as a sher-
iff’s office is an open ques-
tion. Bowen said he envi-
sions what he called a new
“justice center” that would
house the sheriff’s office,
La Grande PD, dispatch and
mental health services.
Like other law enforce-
ment agencies throughout
the Eastern Oregon and
the nation, mental health
calls for service are part
of the daily work. Bowen
while running for sheriff
focused on the need to
improve mental health ser-
vices in the county. He said
he remains eager to find a
better way to help people
suffering from mental
illness.
“The subject crying for
mental health help ends up
in jail,” he said. “And the
jail is not the place to help
someone with mental health
issues.”
He said he also knows
making such a justice
center a reality would not
be inexpensive.
frame, hangs an index card.
He pointed to the other
young men in the photo
with him, recounting where
each is now. All went on
to productive lives and
careers, he said. To the
right of the photo is the
index card Bowen framed
revealing he received a cita-
tion for disorderly conduct
in 1993.
“It’s one of the things
to this day that keeps me
grounded,” Bowen said.
Bowen said he hap-
pened upon the card in old
county records. The index
card serves as a reminder
of the path he could have
taken, he said, and shows
people can make better
choices and change. His
parents divorced when he
was young, and as a teen
he got into some trouble,
but he said he “straightened
up” right after high school
when he became a father
at 19 and went on to attend
Blue Mountain Community
College in Pendleton before
building a career in law
enforcement.
That time of his life
informs him in other ways,
Bowen said, such as helping
him relate to people, from
the sheriff’s office staff
to the larger community.
That’s another gap he said
he wants to fill in.
Bowen said he wants
to find ways for the com-
munity to better know the
people working in the sher-
iff’s office. They buy their
groceries at local stores,
their children go to schools
in Union County. They are
members of the community.
He also said they happen
to be fine law enforcement
employees.
“They make my job
easy,” Bowen said.
Staying grounded
Bowen’s small office
reflects who he is. There’s
a couple of deer skulls on
the wall, one with antlers
shedding. A plaque of the
Second Amendment hangs
to the left of his desk.
And right by the
doorway is a photo of
Bowen in his younger years
and some of the ruffians he
ran with. Next to that, in a
new records for infections.
As the country and the
world bid goodbye, and
good riddance, to 2020 it
became clear that 2021,
at least the early months,
would look pretty similar.
Politics shifted with
President Joe Biden taking
over. After four years of
chaos and controversy, the
new president brought a
sense of calm to national
politics. Still, vaccine
delays persist, and it’s not
clear if America is winning
its war against the virus.
The COVID-19 death
toll is not stopping at
500,000, and the virus has
mutated countless times,
with some variants easier
to spread and harder to
protect against.
a couple brought their own
table and even fine china to
enjoy Italian takeout.
Glimmers of hope
Amid escalating loss,
vaccines arrived in mid-De-
cember, kicking off the big-
gest vaccination effort in
U.S. history. It felt like the
first good news in a doomed
year. As doctors and nurses
got the first shots, some
cheered. Others wept, the
constant trauma and sorrow
merging with hope in one
indescribable moment.
As vaccine supply picked
up, many amusement parks
and stadiums, after months
vacant, reopened as vacci-
nation sites.
Holidays, so often a time
of hope, brought more suf-
fering. Empty chairs at
family tables were a painful
reminder of lost loved
ones. Millions of Ameri-
cans ignored official pleas
to avoid travel and gather-
ings, making the holidays a
catalyst for new infections.
Surge upon surge of new
cases followed Thanks-
giving and then Christmas
and New Year’s Eve, with
each day seemingly setting
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