This story flew up in my Facebook memories today:
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I was ending a graveyard shift in NW Fresno one morning. It’s filled with county jurisdiction islands.
The sun is just starting to come up and as I’m northbound on Van Ness Extension, I see two airplanes taxiing eastbound on Herndon—I thought. It had been “one of those busy nights....”
I punched it and cleared the half mile or more to Herndon and turned eastbound.
Sure enough, there they were, now eastbound Herndon at about West Ave. I caught up to them at about Palm and lit them up. As I did, it hit me—how am I going to sound calling this in....? A Vehicle Sop on two airplanes?
I did somehow, and with Dispatch sounding like maybe I had gone 5150 [crazy], and to the click of mics from around the county.
And, then, the airplanes kept going. Great, now I’m in slow speed pursuit of two airplanes.
The back one was a tail dragger, so he’s weaving back and forth just so he can see where he’s going. And of course, it’s not like they have rear view mirrors to see what’s behind them.
As they turned southbound on Maroa, I think that’s when they finally realized I was behind them.
When they stopped, finally, I had amassed almost all my fellow Deputies in metro Fresno (probably to perform a welfare check on me) and substantial number of Fresno PD Officers who carried scanners.
It turned out that Fig Garden Village, an upscale shopping center at Palm/Shaw, was having some sort of event that day. These two pilots were taking the planes from Sierra Sky Park on Herndon to FGV for display. They had mapped out a route they could take that had the wing width clearance they needed to get into the proper shopping center driveway.
Well, after a lot of laughs, we gave them a full Fresno SO/PD escort.
Then we told them, when it’s time to go back to the airport, call CHP. 😂
A couple decades, a divorce, and moves later, a neighbor started telling me the story. Apparently, I blew past him and lit up the planes. He followed and watched. He had been telling the story for years, and said most folks didn’t believe him.
