14 American Police Beat: January 2018 There are lots of ways cops save lives and organ donation is just one of them by Cynthia Brown H ere’s the thing about being an organ donor – it’s just not all that sexy. In the movies when a cop saves someone’s life they’re usually expertly shooting someone hold- ing a hostage or some- thing just as cinematic and dramatic. But cops save lives all the time. Sometimes they save a bunch of lives at once. And it isn’t always about high incidents and bad guys. It could be as simple as talking to a kid that never expected a cop to treat them like a human being. Or consider San Fran- cisco Police Officer Anna Cuthbertson. Her resume is that of a lifesaver. She served in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan and fights crime on the streets of San Francisco. But it wasn’t any feat of derring-do that helped Cuthbertson save eight lives recently. She’s an organ donor. Cuthbertson, a mother of a 13-year-old girl, re- cently donated a kidney to a stranger. In a really cool chain reaction, that selfless act wound up saving eight lives. “I thought, the more the merrier. I was thrilled,” said the 35-year-old Cuthbertson, who was recovering at UCSF after surgery when she was interviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle. Cuthbertson got inter- ested in organ donation after she heard a podcast. “It was really just my morbid curiosity at first,” she said. But then she realized this was a way to save lives and decided to do- nate a kidney. She looked for recip- ients in need of organs on a website and found 64-year-old Joan Grealis. Grealis has two kids. “I lost my mother when I was 16, and Joan has kids who are my age,” Cuthb- ertson said. “I thought about how I would do anything to have my mom back, and to think there was a way that I could help these people who are my age keep their mother. I just thought, ‘God, why wouldn’t I?’” Grealis had been on a waiting list for a donor for 3½ years when Cuthbert- son called her and gave her the good news. Then it gets a little complicated. Cuthbertson and Gre- alis were put into a da- tabase that pairs of peo- ple who want to donate and receive organs but who aren’t matches for each other. So Cuthbertson was eventually matched to a stranger and that per- son’s donor matched up perfectly with another individual that needed an organ. That went on and on, until there were 18 people — nine donors and nine recipients. So by trying to save one person, Cuth- bertson wound up helping to save eight. “If I could highlight one thing about all of this, it’s that it’s so easy,” Cuthbertson said. “If people just did more research about it, they could really help save a life.” Here at American Police Beat,we’rebigfansof“cops saving critters” stories. Let’s see, we’ve done llamas, goats, monkeys, pigs (both “minis” and full-size hogs), hawks, ducks, cats and even alli- gators and crocodiles. This is the first time we’ve ever heard about cops and camels. Camels, as most people know, are built for the desert. Humans can die of thirst in a matter of days. Camels have been known to go without wa- ter for periods of six or seven months! But there’s no desert in Central Oregon. The Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office respond- ed to a call recently that dispatchers must have thought was a gag. But Sgt. William Bailey says deputies arrived on the scene and there it was. It turns out that the cam- el’s owner had brought the camel along to visit a friend in the area and the animal simply wander- ed off. “He untied himself and went on a walk- about,” Sgt. Bailey said. “A neighbor down the street saw him in a pas- ture and called it in.” Then came the hard part. If you’ve ever seen a camel in a bad mood you know these creatures can be pretty nasty. “Oddly enough, anoth- er person happened to be in the area who had some experience with the camel and helped halter it,” Bailey told reporters with Oregon Live. The owner turned up a short while later to take custody of the animal. The sheriff’s office natu- rally posted a short video of the events on Twitter. It’s got to be a first: Cops save confused camel San Francisco Police Officer Anna Cuthbertson has served in war zones in Iraq and Afghani- stan. But it was her decision to become an organ donor that made such a huge difference for so many. NOT ALL HEROES WEAR CAPES Sorry about that, folks. I had my jams turned way up and lost track of where I was at. Anyone got any beef jerky? A cop’s selfless act saves more than she thought ★ ★