Before Steve Lowrance leaves for work, he sometimes tells his wife, “If for whatever reason I don’t make it back, just realize I always did what I thought was right.”
Lowrance, undersheriff for the San Juan County (Silverton) Sheriff’s Office, is being anything but melodramatic. Just last year he came within a half-inch of losing his life when a bullet ricocheted off his tooth and through the left side of his jaw. And in the early 2000s, he was the victim of a near-fatal car crash and later suffered a gunshot wound to his right leg, both while on duty.
The brushes with death might cause some think rethink their career in law enforcement. But for Lowrance, the close calls made him take stock of his surroundings and reminded him of his values.
Lowrance’s origin story as a law enforcement officer is anything but heroic. In 2000, he was working on a ranch in Blanca. One day, a friend asked if he had any interest in attending the police academy with him. Without giving it much thought, Lowrance agreed.
“I figured, what the hell?” Lowrance said.
Shortly after starting his work as an officer, Lowrance began to realize how dangerous his job could be. While working at the Center Police Department, Lowrance’s patrol vehicle, a Ford Crown Victoria, was T-boned on the driver’s side door by a Dodge pickup truck.
Flight For Life flew Lowrance to a hospital in Denver with a broken jaw, nose and ribs; a skull fracture; and blood and spinal fluid leaking from his left ear. He was in the ICU for six days, stayed in the hospital for two weeks and didn’t return to work for four months. He and Norma Sanchez had just begun dating.
When Lowrance returned to his job, it was no longer on a whim.
“It sounds kind of cheesy, but I believe in what I do,” Lowrance said. “I don’t believe in the law, because the law is up for interpretation, but I believe in what the law is trying to do; trying to give everyone an equal chance and keep people safe.”
Lowrance acknowledged it was scary to return to work after a crash like that, but he said scarier yet would be working a job he didn’t believe in. When people remark to him that he could have died in various accidents, Lowrance says, “Yeah, that could have happened, but it didn’t.”
“You have to force yourself to get back in that car, and if you believe in what you’re doing, you get back in the car. If you don’t believe in what you’re doing, it’s not worth doing,” Lowrance said.
Lowrance knows when he does die, hopefully peacefully, after a long life, he wants to be proud of the life he lived.
“I always look at it, like, when I’m done in this world and when I’m standing in front of the author of all things, whoever that is, and he or she looks at me and says, ‘What have you done with the life that I’ve given you,’ I can say, ‘I answered the call to people that needed me, I put my breath into other people’s bodies so that they can live, I tried to save lives, I wasn’t always successful, but I contributed. And, I think that’s worth something,” Lowrance said.
Lowrance’s second workplace accident occurred in 2006 when he was working for the Costilla County Sheriff’s Office. While at the shooting range, an officer fired a 9 mm pistol that ricocheted off a steel target and went through Lowrance’s right leg. Lowrance merely viewed the incident as an accident.
Lowrance’s desire to keep working in law enforcement despite multiple near-death experiences might seem perplexing to some. But to understand his commitment, one must understand the way he measures the value of a human life.
“He thinks about other people before himself,” said Sanchez, now his wife.
That might have been the case last year when Lowrance was shot in the jaw while trying to save a woman.
In the early hours of April 2, 2019, Lowrance drove south on U.S. Highway 550 to join a high-speed chase headed north out of Durango. Lowrance and other officers picked up the car near Molas Lake and boxed it in.
Lowrance made contact with the three suspects in the car. The situation seemed to be de-escalating, and the suspects appeared calm and compliant.
But things quickly took a turn for the worse.
The driver, 30-year-old Amanda Christine Maes, said, “I’m going to kill myself,” and pulled a gun from the car. Lowrance acted quickly to try to wrestle the gun from Maes, but was unsuccessful.
Maes fired a shot, ending her life. But the bullet traveled through Maes and struck Lowrance in a tooth, ricocheted and exited the left side of his jaw.
Lowrance returned to work a week later.
Reflecting on the incident, Lowrance places the utmost importance on respecting the dignity and humanity of Maes’ life. He said some people have expressed anger toward Maes for placing his life at risk or dismissed her for her life choices. But that kind of talk goes against how he views his role and the value he places in each human life, he said.
“It has to be said, regardless of what her faults were, she was still a human being. She deserved any help that I could try to give her,” he said. “Sadly, I failed, and that’s difficult for me to bear. But, it doesn’t matter who she is or who she was or what problems that she had. I would still try to save her life, and I understand that it risked my own life, but that’s what I’m here for. I’m here to save lives. She was as deserving as anyone else. ... She was a human being, she was in a dark spot in her life and that’s why I did what I did.”
A foundational belief of Lowrance’s is that all people are deserving of his service. He knows that might place him in dangerous positions, but it’s part of the job, he said.
“I asked to do this job. I want to do this job. So, I have no complaints,” Lowrance said. These things happen and I have no complaints. I asked to be here.”
Recounting some of the things he’s done over his 20-year career, such as delivering children, pulling people out of car wrecks, helping victims of domestic violence and taking dangerous people off the street, Lowrance said, “Like a lot of people, I thought I’d try this for a couple years and then move onto something else, but I realized that it’s beneficial to other people. There’s something here that’s worth doing.”
smarvin@durangoherald.com
