Special to the Journal
A former Robins Security
Forces Airman was honored as the Charleston Police Department’s Citizen of the
Year during an awards ceremony Feb. 1.
Jeffery
Aldana – who was a staff sergeant at the time – and his family had been
vacationing in Folly Beach in early 2012, and while driving back to Charleston
one night on a stretch of road, witnessed an officer being hit by a vehicle as
he was directing traffic from an earlier accident.
Aldana,
28, immediately responded, jumping out of his car to assist the officer until
local emergency personnel arrived.
“It’s
one of those unfortunate circumstances … I really didn’t even think; as soon as
I saw what happened, I just ran,” recalled Aldana, who recently separated from
the Air Force after 10 years of service in security forces. “We’d been looking
to him for direction and saw that an SUV was not stopping and hit him.
“He flew pretty far,” Aldana added. “I
remember thinking ‘Oh God, I hope he’s OK.’ The impact sounded like an actual
vehicle hitting another vehicle. That’s how hard he was hit.”
Aldana
found Wes Foster – a veteran law enforcement officer who joined the Charleston
Police Department just six months earlier – unconscious. Using the skills he
learned in the Air Force, he performed self-aid and buddy care by speaking to
him to try to get him to regain consciousness. He stabilized his neck,
attempted to remove some of the officer’s gear, and reassured the father of two
that he was going to be OK.
Once
local EMS arrived, Aldana directed traffic until other officers arrived.
Aldana
deployed less than a week later without knowing the condition of the
officer. It was Aldana’s wife,
Michelle, who reached out to the police department a few weeks later, much to
the organization’s relief since they didn’t know the name of the person who
assisted at the scene.
Foster,
a 41-year-old husband and father of two, was later told by accident scene
investigators that he landed about 60 feet from where he was hit.
“The
doctors said they didn’t know what (Aldana) did, but whatever it was kept me
from having permanent brain damage,” he said.
After
being transported to a nearby trauma center, doctors diagnosed a fractured
skull and orbital, a broken left hand, and two broken bones in his right leg.
His right knee required extensive reconstructive surgery.
As
a result, he was out of
work for the next four months and released for light work duty in the summer.
Foster was able to return to full duty in December.
“I have no
doubt, I owe a lot of what Jeff did to my recovery,” said Foster.
Upon
meeting Aldana and his family last week during the awards ceremony, he said as
the two families’ children played together that it was nice to finally meet
face to face.
“It worked
out really well,” said Foster. “I don’t know how to explain it, but it was like
talking to someone I’d known forever.”
Aldana,
currently a full-time student at Macon State pursuing an information technology
degree, was amazed at how well Foster had bounced back.
“It was so
nice to see him; he looked great!” Aldana said.
Potentially
losing a friend and fellow officer is never a situation anyone wants to deal
with, said a member of the Charleston department.
“There’s no
worse call a police commander can get than the one from dispatch saying they
think you’ve lost one,” said Lt. Rusty Myers, Charleston PD’s Team Three
commander. “I will never forget what Aldana did to keep me from losing one of
mine.”
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