Five minutes after the telephone rings, Deputy Lawrence Hardiman is spooling up the turbine engine on the Port St. Lucie County (Florida) Sheriff Department's Bell 206L LongRanger helicopter. It is 2 o'clock in the morning, but the forward-looking infrared (FLIR) sensor and the SX-16 "Night Sun" 30-million-candlepower spotlight on the helicopter allow it to operate as effectively at night as during the day.
This call could be to airlift an accident victim to a local hospital, a search-and-rescue mission, a hunt for stolen property or a crime suspect, or a request to support a Coast Guard, Drug Enforcement Agency, or Customs operation. The inherent maneuverability of a helicopter and the special equipment on the Florida sheriff's department machine allow it to perform a wide variety of services.
Flying the high-tech helicopter is only one of Hardiman's duties, however. Six hours after rolling the LongRanger back in the hangar, Hardiman may be in the air again — this time doing a low-level patrol of the Florida beaches in a stock Cessna 172, looking for sharks, swimmers in trouble, or drug shipments that washed ashore during the night. Later, he may climb into the left seat of the department's twin-engine Cessna 421B to transport prisoners or law enforcement officials to some other location in the state. It might sound like a lot of work, but Hardiman thinks he has one of the best flying jobs around.
Hardiman remembers wanting to be a pilot since he was very young. His father was in the Air Force for 20 years, and Hardiman spent many childhood hours watching Air Force jets take off and land and dreaming of becoming a fighter pilot. He joined the Air Force after high school, but he was medically discharged less than a year later after injuring his knee.
Still hoping to become a corporate pilot, Hardiman got a construction job and started taking flying lessons on the side as money permitted. His first 19 flight hours took him two years to accumulate. In an effort to focus more on flying, he moved back home to Florida in 1978 and began flying at Tilford Aviation at Palm Beach International Airport. Hardiman was able to use his veterans' benefits to pay for some of his advanced ratings once he had his private certificate. He paid for his primary training by working nights fueling airplanes at Tilford.
A week before he got his private certificate, a friend gave him his first helicopter lesson. "I kind of got the bug for helicopters then, but they were so expensive that I really didn't think about flying them," he remembers. For the next couple of years, Hardiman concentrated on building flying hours toward his advanced airplane ratings, but he occasionally got the chance to fly with helicopter pilots based at Palm Beach.
The more he flew helicopters, however, the more hooked he got on them and what they could do. "Helicopters give you a sensation you don't get with anything else," he explains. "You have control over all axes, much more so than in a fixed-wing aircraft. You can be stationary or fly up, down, and backwards, and you really feel suspended in the air. A helicopter will also do a lot of jobs a fixed-wing just can't do."
Hardiman finally decided to pursue a commercial helicopter certificate along with his fixed-wing ratings. He got a better paying, but less interesting, job and moved back home with his parents to save money. One year and $8,500 later, he passed his commercial helicopter check ride. For the next couple of years, he spent all his spare time at the airport, taking advantage of every opportunity to build flying hours. Many of the helicopter pilots Hardiman knew worked for law enforcement agencies, and he became an auxiliary for the Florida Game and Fish Commission so he could fly in the Bell 206B JetRanger and the Cessna 172 the agency kept at Palm Beach.
Hardiman soon discovered that he enjoyed the diversity and nonstandard operations of law enforcement flying. Unfortunately, there weren't very many jobs open, and police departments preferred hiring pilots who were already certified police officers. So Hardiman enrolled in the police academy and became a patrolman for the West Palm Beach Police Department. All his spare hours were still spent at the airport, however, flying small airplanes with friends and getting precious extra helicopter time. He earned his commercial certificate and completed his instrument and multiengine ratings, figuring that the more ratings he had, the better his chances of being hired.
Finally, in June 1989, he was hired by the Port St. Lucie Sheriff's Department. Hardiman acknowledges that the road to a job as a law enforcement pilot was a long one, but he says it was well worth it. "I get paid to do something that I really enjoy and that most people pay to do," he says. "And doing the kind of work I do, every day is different."
Although he enjoys all the flying he does for the sheriff's department, Hardiman says that the medevac flights are especially rewarding. "You feel like you're really doing something worthwhile when you get someone to the hospital in time and realize you helped save their life," he explains. Now that he's a father, however, he notes that "it's harder when the victim is a small child, because my own son is two and a half, and it hits me that it could easily be him."
In his spare time, Hardiman still goes flying with friends whenever he can, and he has plans to buy his own airplane as soon as the money is available. He's also working toward an instructor certificate, so he can teach on his days off. "I've had such a long road to travel to get to where I am that I'd like to pass some of that on to someone else," he explains.
Flight instructing would also allow Hardiman to spend even more time in one of his favorite places — the sky. "Flying gives me a kind of freedom I can't get on the ground," he says. "The society we live in today has a lot of restrictions, but when I'm up in the air, there are very few restrictions on me. I can pretty much go where I want."
It was a combination of this love of flying and a lot of determination that got Hardiman where he is today. It wasn't easy, and he takes a lot of pride in what he has achieved. "The flying I do, especially some of the helicopter work, takes an incredible amount of precision and coordination," he says. "There are also not a whole lot of people who fly both fixed-wing and helicopters. The feeling of accomplishment that gives me is something nobody can ever take away."
Lane E. Wallace, AOPA 896621, is an aviation writer and private pilot who has been flying for more than seven years. She owns a 1946 Cessna 120 and is restoring a 1943 Stearman.
