Who will speak for the trees?
—Chief Justice William O. Douglas, 1972
If I am among the mountains, yet in a sour mood or with my thoughts elsewhere I hear not their voices—feel not their Presence and Forces.
—Randy Morgenson, Nepal, 1969
IN JUNE 1997, about a year after she last saw Randy in the backcountry at Bench Lake, Kings Canyon Sierra Crest Subdistrict Ranger Cindy Purcell stood before a group of his peers at the Cedar Grove visitor center. It was her job—“honor,” as she put it—to begin the memorial service for Randy Morgenson.
Most of Randy’s closest ranger friends were there, but some, including Judi, couldn’t bring themselves to attend a memorial without a body or, for that matter, an official declaration of death. Nevertheless, Purcell recounted those four “special” days in which she had gotten acquainted with the ranger who would become a mystery.
“Randy was as complex an individual as any one of us,” said Purcell. “His dreams had conflicts. His ghosts were big and scary. But his spirit was so full of joy and love that he could overcome his doubts and move through them.” The summer season of 1996 “was a time for Randy to go through a great deal of soul-searching, some of which he shared with me.
“There was a great deal of personal strength in this man. He told me that this was the strength he got from the Sierra. He loved this place with his total being. During the winter of 1995, he toyed with the idea of not returning for another summer, but the mountains called him back.
“This is the time to remember the events of last summer that left each one of us empty and questioning.
“What drew him away from his ranger station on that day in July?
“He was in ‘ranger mode.’ It was time to patrol. Perhaps he was called by some 12,000-foot peak, or a favorite place visited too long ago needed revisiting…. We shall never stop asking, ‘Randy where are you?’”
In addition to leading the memorial service, Purcell had taken it upon herself to research any available awards in the National Park Service that might honor Randy. She discovered the Truman James Memorial Award (Truman James was a seasonal SEKI employee killed in a tree-trimming accident), created to recognize “deserving seasonal employees…who exhibit special environmental awareness through conservation efforts, preservation efforts, educational enlightenment of the Park’s visitors, or special concern to visitor safety.” Randy qualified for all of the above.
Purcell’s proposal for the award sung Randy’s praises. “He could identify any plant or wildflower by genus and species with an enthusiasm that encompassed him,” she wrote. He possessed “a very special environmental awareness…specifically for the fragile meadow areas he loved. He maintained undying energy to lobby for the closure of meadows where he monitored irreparable damage to fragile species…energetic in the education of the wilderness visitor to support minimum impact ethics and encourage the visitor to assume responsibility for protecting the parks…a base of feelings strong enough to be felt by those of us fortunate enough to have worked with this outstanding individual.”
The award—Randy’s name on a plaque displayed at the Ash Mountain headquarters—was granted shortly before his memorial.
Purcell had also spent months combing through Randy’s logbooks in preparation for the service, pulling out hundreds of worthy passages that she had edited down to thirty-five, which were handed out among memorial attendees to read aloud.
There were chuckles from the crowd during some of the readings, such as the passage recounting the time Randy had “a long and sunny, very congenial and mutually rewarding lunch with a chipmunk. He is a little timid, understandably enough considering my relative size, and reserved his comradeship for a day when there was only one of me.”
Or one of the hundreds of times his radio had died, and the park helicopter flew in to bring him “a new radio, right? Wrong. But a large and weighty burlap sack was unloaded, so I sent my 2-watt radio back out. Alas, the burlap sack only contained a bottle of wine and more chuck roast and rib steak than I could eat in a week. So here I sit with half a cow wrapped in my sleeping bag and no way to call for any of my compadres to come help me with it.”
One of the last passages read had been written by Randy during his first season at Rae Lakes, more than thirty years before. Even then, as a young man, he’d captured the subtle nuances of autumn in the high country—the trigger for backcountry ranger melancholy. “An extremely clear, perfectly cloudless day,” he wrote. “Fall has definitely come to the High Country. The air is clearer and cooler, nighttime temperatures are close to freezing, the sky is much bluer in the afternoon, very deep and dark in the east, blending into a lighter color in the west—and the caressing summer breezes have become gusty afternoon winds. The whole atmosphere seems quieter, so the animal sounds seem louder and more clear, and the wind more hollow. Tis a beautiful time of year, but a somewhat sad one, for it brings the end of the Sierra season.”
“After that quote,” remembers Nina Weisman, “you could have heard a pin drop.”
Following the memorial, Weisman hiked to her backcountry ranger station at Bearpaw Meadow, where the first thing she did was post the quote she had read in a place of honor—above the toilet paper roll in her ranger station’s “facilities.”
“Sitting on a rock for the noon radio check, halfway down the South Fork, I feel no questions, no troubles, just a great oneness with all welling up inside me. This moment is all that is, all that ever will be. Memories can never equal the experience, and at best we can only attempt to visualize the future. The best we can do is absorb the most possible from Great Moments Like These.”
“Randy,” she says, “would have appreciated the humor.”
Weisman then took out the laminated Missing Ranger bulletin she’d had on the window of her cabin after the search had ended the season before. It urged hikers and climbers to “Please be on the lookout for an abandoned camp or any scattered pieces of clothing, backpack or its contents or human remains. Boulder fields, bases of cliffs, couloirs, and lake shores are areas to be alert in.” Now, at the start of her second season as the Bearpaw Meadow ranger, she reposted it and intended to repost it each season, no matter where she was stationed, until the mystery was solved. Though she hadn’t been part of the SAR itself, she would see to it that backpackers passing through her section of Sequoia and Kings Canyon knew of Randy’s disappearance. It was her way of making sure Randy’s ghost marched into the ranks of wilderness legends, “not to be confused with those who earned the distinction simply because they walked into the wilderness one day and never came back,” she explains. “Randy Morgenson is a legend because of the life he led here in the Sierra.” His disappearance was merely the catalyst that brought into focus the legendary and selfless acts he’d performed—which Weisman made sure were known to anybody asking about “that missing ranger.”
Virtually all the backcountry rangers, and some from the frontcountry, did their part to keep Randy’s spirit alive. In the back of the class during law enforcement training, they quietly discussed the places they intended to search once they were flown to their stations. At night, they gathered around bottles of wine and told stories of “Morgensonia.”
At their stations, they pored over the dusty files and logbooks, seeking tangible pieces of his ghost in the fading, mouse-chewed archives. The backcountry rangers called these words written by Randy Morgenson “The Gospel.”
ALMOST IMMEDIATELY after the search was called off, Chief Ranger Debbie Bird had recommended that Judi file for the Public Safety Officers’ Benefit Program.
Judi, whose life had been in turmoil for three years, was encouraged to pursue a death benefit for Randy, whom she had been in the process of divorcing. But it didn’t sound right to her; it sounded as if she was unwilling to stay with the man, but she certainly was willing to take money to honor his death. She was on the fence until Durkee spoke to her. “The point I tried to make to Judi,” he says, “was that Randy didn’t want the divorce—his letter to the court proved that.” He told her that, whether she liked it or not, she was still married to Randy. Durkee also reminded her that Randy hadn’t felt particularly appreciated for his twenty-eight years of service and this benefit, however late, was a symbol of appreciation. “Judi, Randy would want you to have this,” Durkee told her. “He knew the pain he caused you.”
Judi consented, and in doing so opened up a can of worms. While friends and colleagues kept Randy’s spirit alive, Judi found it exceedingly difficult to prove his passing. She knew Randy was dead, just as she had known when he was having an affair. “A woman just knows these things,” she says.
Admittedly, her heart skipped a beat every time she saw a man with a dark beard approaching her on the street. Numerous times, she’d envisioned Randy knocking on the door, and she would hug him and kiss him…and then, with a bit of Hollywood drama, she’d slap him and beat on his chest and hug him again. Every single time the phone rang, she wondered if maybe, just maybe, it was Randy, ready to come home. She was trapped in the cruel and inescapable whirlpool of not knowing. Her life was at a spinning standstill. Even if she had the desire, she couldn’t go forward with her own life. How could she, in good conscience, move forward in a new relationship without closure? On the flip side, she was gearing up to fight for a benefit based on the belief that there was closure—that Randy was, with certainty, dead. It was maddening. More than once, when she didn’t know if she could go on with the claim, Durkee stepped in.
“Thank god for George and Paige,” says Judi.
Durkee had made it a priority to see that Judi Morgenson received the Public Safety Officers’ Benefit of $100,000 from the U.S. Department of Justice, not only for Judi but also for Randy. With this purpose in mind, Chief Ranger Debbie Bird essentially gave Durkee and Judi the key to the parks’ administrative offices. If there was anything the parks could do, she would try to facilitate it.
Two basic elements are needed for benefit eligibility. One: a body. Two: proof that the officer has been killed while on duty. Without number one, number two cancels out by default. But Bird did some research and found that “proof of death” could suffice in lieu of a body. This was possible if the director of the Park Service or the secretary of the Department of the Interior declared Randy dead.
With the help of Bird and Durkee, the request for an official proof of death was made. Now it was time to wait.
MORE THAN A YEAR after the original search for Randy was called off, there still was no ruling on his death. Judi did, however, return to the Sierra. She’d been invited by Debbie Bird to Bench Lake, an opportunity to meet some of the rangers who had searched for her husband and to pay her last respects as a follow-up search did a final sweep of the area for Randy’s remains.
When Judi boarded the park helicopter on September 22, 1997, she was both nervous and oddly at ease. She felt, in a way, as if she was coming home. As they flew above LeConte Canyon and toward Lake Basin, the helicopter decreased altitude. Looking down at the deep blue waters of the Dumbbell Lakes made Judi gasp, an abrupt physical reaction that gave her chills.
She’d had that “vivid dream” shortly after Randy’s disappearance of him floating with a backpack on at the bottom of a lake. “After that dream,” says Judi, “I always thought he was under water. That vision never let up.” Once they landed at Bench Lake, Judi relayed the information to Eric Morey, the incident commander, who assigned a team to thoroughly check the lake once again. “They didn’t find anything,” says Judi. “They sent out technical climbers from Yosemite to search the cliffs they couldn’t access the year before. Nothing. Not a clue. But he was out there. I could feel it.”
Before the current search began, Cindy Purcell had asked all the rangers to contribute their theories. One ranger wrote, “Have been scratching my head on this search…it does seem to be in the ‘rolling over rocks’ mode.” The ranger then suggested eliminating areas that had been well-searched: “Example—Explorer Pass is a narrow chute. If he had fallen there, chances are we would have found him.” The suicide theory was still alive: “Look closely in areas where he may have jumped, particularly on the north side of Arrow and Marion Peaks…most likely scenarios: a total immobilizing injury…or a swan dive. Other than this, there would only be bone fragments left, with his pack and camping gear being the most likely items to be seen.”
Five days of intense searching by twenty ground searchers uncovered not a single clue.
JUDI FLEW HOME to Sedona and dived into her art. She decided to turn the garage into a studio. This would mean selling Randy’s 1932 Ford Model B five-window coupe, which he’d held on to since he’d bought it in high school. Before he left for the summer, he had told Judi to “sell it if you can get a good price.” Now, she decided, maybe it was time…
After Randy’s disappearance, Judi realized that she was the keeper of many of the Morgenson family treasures. Randy’s brother, Larry, would call Judi to “check in” on her, but the conversations always ended with him requesting some piece of his parents’ property that had been left to his brother. Some items Judi didn’t mind letting go of, but she felt a duty to protect the memories and to honor Dana and Esther as she knew her husband would have. Eventually, she decided that Larry was more interested in the property than in any updates about her or his brother. After a few years, she asked him to stop calling.
Beyond his parents’ books and keepsakes, there were other things belonging to Randy that she knew he wouldn’t have wanted to sit unused in boxes. In particular, his camera equipment. Stuart Scofield was the one person Judi knew Randy would have wanted to go through his photography treasures.
Scofield arrived in Sedona uncertain about how he would react when he went through Randy’s personal belongings. He hugged Judi, and on cue, tears welled up in her eyes. She explained how tears came easily anytime she encountered someone associated with Randy. After they caught up, Scofield was left alone in the first bedroom off the house’s entrance, which had served as Randy’s main library. An entire wall was filled with books, and boxes of slides, prints, and equipment were stacked around the room. Judi had also directed Scofield to a dresser filled with photography odds and ends.
Scofield admits that before he opened one of those dresser drawers, he had not been prone to metaphysical thinking. That changed when he pulled out a cardboard box about the size of a hiking boot shoe box that was filled with random items such as a flash, battery pack, camera batteries, and lens cleaner. It looked like a neatly arranged care package intended for a photographer. Sitting atop the assortment, centered in the box, was a small pamphlet “like you’d get in Sunday school,” says Scofield, “and on the cover of this little pamphlet was Sermon on the Mount, from the Bible. It totally threw me backwards—back in time to Randy’s Sermon at Mineral King.”
It was the late 1980s, when Scofield and Randy had taught a photography workshop called Wilderness Landscapes. They’d camped at the Potwisha campground inside the parks’ Ash Mountain entrance, and woke with the students early one morning to make it to the nearby Mineral King Valley while the light was still right for photography.
The night before had been a sky show of “fantastic thunderstorms,” and there was still a lot of moisture in the air. Randy had planned to inspire the students by telling them how Walt Disney almost turned the Mineral King Valley into a huge resort. This was the type of thing Randy and Scofield did in their workshops, which weren’t just about how to take photographs. They were, according to Scofield, “about how you decide who you are out in the world as a photographer, and if you’re going to photograph the landscape, how you develop a rapport with the wilds.”
That misty morning, Scofield, Randy, and a dozen students gathered at the trailhead and focused their attention on the stunning Mineral King Valley. Randy discreetly climbed up onto a rocky knoll and began reading what Scofield described as “amazingly powerful passages” that Randy had prepared about this, the site of one of the environmental movement’s greatest battles: Sierra Club v. Morton—the 1972 Supreme Court case widely referred to as Mineral King versus Disney.
Fog rolled in and around Randy as he spoke from atop the granite podium, sometimes shrouding him almost entirely from the students. But his voice, reading the powerful words of Supreme Court Associate Justice William O. Douglas, was strong and steady:
So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life. The river, for example, is the living symbol of all the life it sustains or nourishes—fish, aquatic insects, water ouzels, otter, fisher, deer, elk, bear, and all other animals, including man, who are dependent on it or who enjoy it for its sight, its sound, or its life. The river as plaintiff speaks for the ecological unit of life that is part of it. Those people who have a meaningful relation to that body of water—whether it be a fisherman, a canoeist, a zoologist, or a logger—must be able to speak for the values which the river represents and which are threatened with destruction.
“Who,” asked Randy with a dramatic pause before quoting the rest of Douglas’s most famous line, “will speak for the trees?”
“When he finished, the students cheered,” says Scofield. “The whole scene had taken on these epic proportions—the jagged Sierra crest farther up the valley coming in and out of focus through the mist. It was incredibly moving.” And a mini history lesson: most of the students didn’t know that Mineral King had been the case that raised the question of rights for inanimate objects. Scofield, who has taught workshops for more than twenty years, says he has never seen an instructor move an audience the way Randy did that day. “It was like Jesus on the mountain,” explains Scofield. “Powerful weather, amazing beauty, the fog, the crest. It just all came together.”
And it all came back to him now, vividly, as he sat among Randy’s belongings. Ever since that day at Mineral King, Scofield had referred to Randy’s speech as “Randy’s Sermon on the Mount.” He was suddenly overcome by the unshakable conviction that this care package was not just for any photographer—it was tailor-made for him. “There was no question in my mind,” says Scofield. “It was a message from Randy.”
Later, Judi showed Scofield some of the endless files that Randy had kept on virtually every aspect of his life—files that held documents from grammar school, high school, college, the Peace Corps, his correspondence with Wallace Stegner and Ansel Adams, his ranger training, his mother and father, and an extensive documentation of his photography, including the workshops he’d taught.
When Scofield saw those files, he was further convinced that the box was indeed a message from Randy. “If he had wanted to file that Sermon on the Mount pamphlet away as part of his history, Randy kept files of things like that,” he says. “That is where he would have put it. If you assume for a minute that he did want me to find it, he would have known that Judi would have had me go through his camera equipment, but may not have gone through his files. And sure enough, Judi invited me out to do just that. Randy knew. He was thinking about either disappearing or taking his life when he packed that box. He wanted me to have something, a piece of him.
“It worked, all right—that little pamphlet hit me like a ton of bricks.”
Scofield shared with Judi the story of Randy’s Sermon on the Mount, but he wasn’t entirely forthcoming about his belief that the pamphlet had underlying meanings. Judi was grieving, and he didn’t want to add to her burden—certainly not that Randy may have been planning his disappearance or his death.
Scofield did, however, have one other theory, though it was “out there.” He considered it possible that Randy might have put this box together simply because “he sensed something might happen to him.” Perhaps if Scofield had brought up that theory, Judi might have told him the “message” she herself had gotten from Randy, a message delivered, appropriately, within the pages of a book—the novel he’d given her before he left for the mountains.
I Heard the Owl Call My Name had sat on her nightstand until the third or fourth day of the search. She had by that time spent her anger and accepted, or more accurately “knew,” that something had happened. She describes the novel, but only after explaining that Randy always read slowly. “Because he loved the language, he’d savor the language,” says Judi. “He didn’t do anything quickly. He felt you’d miss things if you went too fast. We were open to things, not the mystical New Age stuff here in Sedona, but being in the mountains and spending that much time by yourself…you can tell by his writings he was really in tune with the cycles of nature. You get into those cycles and you become very aware of them, especially when your mind is quiet. It’s very Zen. Everything slows down and you can hear things. You can hear yourself.”
The novel was, in Judi’s words, about “a young minister who was sent by a bishop to British Columbia to live with some native Indians whose tribe was slowly disappearing, losing its old ways and its people. He went there to help them, and in the process learned a lot about life and death and how to accept death. Toward the end, he heard the owl call his name, which was a myth that they had in their tribe. What it meant was that he was going to die. The minister didn’t know it but he had terminal cancer.”
“Subconsciously,” says Judi, “maybe Randy knew. When you’re tapped into the kind of emotional pain he was going through, you are really in tune with other things in nature. The things around you, you just know things—maybe even premonitions. Shortly after reading that book, I had the dream about him being in that lake, under water. So, you get tuned in.
“I think Randy might have had that feeling. Maybe he felt that. Maybe the mountains called his name?”
Some would consider this metaphysical hogwash. In fact, after some time had passed, Judi herself began to discount the possibility that Randy had tuned in to something, remembering that Randy knew she liked owls and had perhaps seen the book and thought of her. Nothing more.
Judi might have thought differently if she had known about Randy’s patrol the season before he disappeared. On September 17, 1995, Randy had hiked from LeConte Canyon down the White Fork to Woods Creek Crossing and then camped in Paradise Valley. Forest fires were raging in the parks. It was raining ash and smelled of acrid smoke. The sun barely cut through the darkness, and then, come nightfall, Randy’s headlamp beam created the same effect as car headlights during a snowstorm. Because of the ash, Randy slept inside his tent, which was unusual.
In the morning, Randy was awakened by an owl calling. It was a surreal day, with silver-and-white ash so thick on the ground it looked like snowfall. He wrote in his logbook, “A great horned owl calling in the wee hours before dawn; eerie smoky dimness, and the owl calling—Paradise.”
Coincidence? Randy might have said, “Only the owl knows for certain.”
But what is known is that great horned owls are common in the parks. It stands to reason, then, that Randy would have mentioned great horned owls calling dozens of times over the years. According to his station logbooks, however, during the entire course of his ranger career, he’d never mentioned hearing the great horned owl—or any owl, for that matter—“calling,” and he’d documented literally thousands of other species, describing in detail their songs, voices, music. Never an owl. Never its call.
Was it a coincidence, then, that nine months later, he gave his wife I Heard the Owl Call My Name as a parting gift on the last day she ever saw him? Did it strike as anything less than odd that of the hundreds of books lined up on his bookshelves, of the thousands in the bookstores he frequented, he would pick a book whose main message is that of a man’s ability to sense his own coming death—if he listens.
Randy had heard an owl calling and described it as “Paradise.” Did he hear anything else? Was there a message? In the wilderness, nobody listened more attentively than Randy.
ON JANUARY 14, 1998, the director of personnel policy and the solicitor of the National Park Service informed Judi that they had completed their review and “found that circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Ranger Morgenson support the presumption that he is no longer alive.”
A year and a half after she’d submitted the request, Judi had legal proof of Randy’s passing. George Durkee put together what he described as a “bombproof” report “proving” that Randy had been killed while on patrol in the backcountry. It included an inch-thick investigation report supplied by Al DeLaCruz, the declaration of death, and the delayed death certificate. In the beginning of March, Park Superintendent Michael Tollefson sent the claim on Judi’s behalf to the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Assistance.
Seven months later, her request was denied in a letter that read, in part: “The evidence submitted on your behalf is insufficient to conclude that your husband’s death was the result of a line of duty…this office recommends that you provide additional evidence that demonstrates…a line of duty death. We regret the loss of your husband, Ranger Morgenson. If you have any questions, please call at…”
Judi resubmitted a beefed-up version. Five months later, she received an official denial that stated “while the PSOB Act requires this determination, such action does not diminish Park Ranger James Randall Morgenson’s distinguished record of public service.” Attached was a two-page, play-by-play reasoning for the decision, including “Ranger Morgenson’s wallet and duty weapon were recovered from his duty station.”
Further, the denial letter stated that the evidence submitted by Judi “is insufficient to conclude that Ranger Morgenson was engaged in duties which he was authorized or required to perform as a park ranger at the time of his death. Ranger Morgenson’s body was not found resulting in the issuance of a Delayed Registration of Death…. The record, as it currently stands, provides very little for this office to make a favorable determination.”
The letter then referenced a case from 1985, Tafoya v. United States, whose ruling “prohibits the use of conjecture and speculation as evidence or fact when it concerns the cause of an officer’s death.”
In conclusion, “Accordingly, Ranger Morgenson’s survivor is ineligible to receive the benefit authorized by the Act.”
When Durkee read the letter, he began fuming. He could picture a bunch of guys sitting in an office in D.C., utterly clueless about the Sierra terrain. “The fact that Randy hadn’t been found would make no sense to them and was probably reason enough to deny the claim,” Durkee told Judi. “The only way they’ll pay is if we find him dead, in his uniform, radio in hand.”
In essence, the Bureau of Justice Assistance left Judi no other choice but to sue, which would be a battlefield strewn with coils of red tape, endless paperwork, and mountainous legal expenses that would likely eat up a good portion of any benefit she’d eventually get. But she couldn’t look behind the injustice. How could a backcountry ranger, whose job it was to patrol—alone—the most rugged terrain in the country’s most treasured wilderness lands, be denied the benefits he thought existed before committing himself to the wilds?
Of course, there still remained the theory that Randy had staged his own disappearance. What if she fought the battle and Randy happened to show up from Mexico with a sombrero and a “Sorry.”
“Impossible,” would be Judi’s response to such a line of questioning in a court of law.
“Why is it impossible, Mrs. Morgenson?” the opposing counsel would probe.
“Because I just know” would be a difficult response to prove in court, especially with $100,000 on the line.
Then there was the veiled suggestion that because Randy’s duty weapon hadn’t been with him, he wasn’t really on duty.
No backcountry ranger was required to carry a sidearm on cross-country routes—or so Judi had been told. But an astute attorney would point to NPS-9, the 2-inch-thick Law Enforcement Policy and Guideline Handbook that Randy and all law-enforcement commissioned rangers were required to know inside out. As early as 1989, NPS-9 stated, in Section II, Chapter 3, page 2, that “commissioned rangers on backcountry patrol shall keep their defensive equipment readily accessible or, at their discretion, may wear defensive equipment on the uniform belt.” The “minimum” defensive equipment to be worn, as stated in NPS-9, includes “handcuffs and case, a 4-inch barrel revolver with holster, and spare ammunition with carriers.”
And on the next page: “Commissioned rangers assigned to duties without law enforcement responsibilities shall follow local park policy.”
Any future court case would be a matter of interpretation of the law and would no doubt get ugly, according to Durkee, who was working closely with two different legal firms representing Judi—both of which had been recommended by the Fraternal Order of Police. The first firm had to drop the case for economic reasons when the Department of Justice made it clear that DOJ law prohibits representation on a contingency basis. Attorney Kenton Komadina of Yen, Pilch, & Komadina in Phoenix, Arizona, reviewed the case and agreed to take on Judi Morgenson as a pro bono client in late 2000.
Shortly thereafter, Durkee put together a comprehensive list of points for Komadina to review, the first being that PSOB law did not include any guidance for situations in which an officer’s body is not found. The law had apparently been written with urban, or at least civilized, settings in mind, settings in which a peace officer killed in the line of duty would certainly not, for example, be covered indefinitely by a rock slide or an avalanche, or be missing in such a vast landscape as to be in effect erased.
Debbie Bird has studied the act scrupulously and feels that “the intent of Congress was that someone like Judi would be eligible for the benefit.” But the reality was that “the law governing the eligibility is unforgivably vague.”
Beyond the benefit itself, Judi had a cause to stand up for: she wanted Randy to be acknowledged for his years of service. Though his life as a ranger had been a strain on their relationship, she’d always respected his tenacious dedication to the wilderness. That he had died while on patrol and was not being officially recognized angered her. Furthermore, there were other rangers who might benefit in the future from the legal precedent this case could set.
Judi appealed the decision in March 2000. Subpoenas were scheduled to be sent out in early January 2001 for a hearing date slated for January 25, 2001. Komadina had a dream team of witnesses lined up to testify, including Randy Coffman, Cindy Purcell, Debbie Bird, and George Durkee. But there was a problem: the hearing was in Phoenix and the witnesses’ travel expenses would not be covered by the NPS, which left Judi Morgenson unable to afford what amounted to thousands of dollars. Durkee volunteered to pay his own way, but his testimony alone wasn’t worth the gamble.
A last-minute motion delayed the hearing and thus bought some time to consider different options. Though this was potentially a longer road, Komadina was optimistic that a more political route might be the best way to influence the DOJ to reverse its decision.