Dream to fly led Richland County deputy to rescue 39 people during Hurricane Maria

Javier Figueroa needed to get to the helicopter.

Rain from Hurricane Maria had pounded Puerto Rico for two days, flooding and incapacitating swaths of the island. From his helicopter, Figueroa saw more than the storm’s destruction. Amongst the ravages of the storm, he saw people huddling on their roofs.

“No matter trees, power lines or waters, (it was about) saving lives,” Figueroa said. “It was difficult conditions, but in this moment, I didn’t care.”

Figueroa is now a helicopter pilot with the Richland County Sheriff’s Department. But a year ago, he was a member of the Puerto Rico Police Department when Hurricane Maria hit the island as a Category 4 storm on Sept. 21. Just this week, the official death toll from the storm in the U.S. territory rose to 2,975.

Today, he tracks suspects and patrols crime scenes from the skies. Last September, he rescued 39 people in one day from the hurricane’s devastation.

The rescue

Hurricane Maria had swallowed Puerto Rico. Rain still fell after the storm had moved off the island. Figueroa rode to the air base. Hurricane damage delayed him for an hour beyond the usual 15-minute drive.

Getting to the base, he boarded the helicopter, strapped into the pilot’s seat and took off. His job was to survey damage. He looked over the island where he grew up and saw towns like the one where he was raised and where his family lived drowning in brown water. Electrical lines floated in the brackish. Limbs crushed homes.

“We have no communications, no internet, no phones no control towers,” Figueroa says. “I don’t know where the situations are or where people need help.”

Flying over the northern town of Toa Baja and in the neighborhood of Ingenio, Figueroa saw floodwaters engulfing homes. People took refuge on roofs. Mothers clung to babies and elderly people braced against the wet surfaces, fighting to keep their footing.

“Immediately, we had to rescue people,” Figueroa says. “I needed to save these lives.”

Figueroa steadied the helicopter over the roofs while his partner lifted people into the aircraft by hand. Landing space was sparse. They landed on top of homes when they could. When no space was found, Figueroa landed one skid on a roof, hazarding the other side of his copter over the floodwaters. His partner would jump out and clear a roof of electrical lines and debris to make room for a landing and to get more people away from devastation. They saved one- and two-month-old babies, Figueroa says. They took people four and five people at a time to safety. He never flew in more dangerous conditions.

At the end of the day, 79 people were rescued by his team of helicopters.

In the months to come, Figueroa flew water, food, medicine and even doctors to people who were stranded by the hurricane’s destruction. He flew 12 to 16 hours at times with little to no visibility, he says.

“It’s very difficult when you see a baby that’s sick with no medicine or no nothing,” Figueroa says. “For a couple months, me and my crew were flying all day in the center of the mountains to help people.”

The storm affected everyone in Puerto Rico. Tragedy struck the police when a flooded river swept away two officers. Figueroa was in the academy with one of the men. Of all the loss, visiting the widow of one of the perished officers was the most bitter.

When officers arrived at the house, she asked where her husband was.

“‘I have food and water for him,’” Figueroa remembers her saying.

They told her that her husband had died trying to help people. Waters took him, Figueroa said.

Origins of flight

“My passion is flying,” Figueroa says.

He found that passion at an early age.

Figueroa grew up in Caño, Puerto Rico. He grew up poor in the local housing projects, he says, and attended the public schools, where the education was of lesser quality than the private schools that the parents with wealth could afford.

“It was good days and good family,” Figueroa said.

By the age of 5, Figueroa knew he wanted to be a police officer and a helicopter pilot. But at 12, his family faced a setback that made life and his goal of becoming a pilot more difficult. His father died, leaving Figueroa’s mother to raise him and his three siblings.

Figueroa joined the Puerto Rico Police Department in 1998 and went on to get a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and master’s degree in management and strategic leadership. He worked in different police units, including street patrol, motorcycles and the SWAT team. After about eight years on the force, Figueroa got closer to the opportunity to become a pilot. He joined a police air unit, but was confronted with one obstacle after another.

“My dream was still to be a helicopter pilot, but I didn’t have money at this point,” Figueroa says.

To get the basic private helicopter pilot’s license cost $50,000 — an amount that seemed unattainable for a kid who grew up in housing projects. But his family came together to raise the necessary money, his mother scrapping up savings and other relatives pulling together their funds.

He started training when he was 26 years old. But an early instructor told him the education he received as a child wasn’t good enough.

“My first problem when I joined to study to be a helicopter pilot was my English,” Figueroa remembers.

Air-traffic control communications are done in English.

“My first instructor told me, ‘You never can study being a helicopter pilot because you don’t know English.’ … That was good motivation for me.”

Figueroa pushed through the language barrier, learning the necessary English for the training.

Then he lost his mother, who passed away from cancer during the training. Again, Figueroa used the hardship to drive himself.

After 18 months of training, Figueroa became a pilot.

A year and a half later, Figueroa was flying a $12 million police helicopter when the control tower called to inform him that another a smaller, much less expensive helicopter was nearby. Figueroa realized that in the lesser aircraft was his old instructor, the one who said he would never be able to make it as a pilot because he couldn’t communicate with the tower in English.

“I tell the tower, ‘I have the baby helicopter in sight,’” Figueroa said.

An offer to leave and chance to stay

Figueroa’s family experienced the aftermath of Hurricane Maria like others. They struggled to get adequate food and water and lived with no electricity. His family was able to go to Virginia for a time, returning to Puerto Rico in early 2018.

Before Hurricane Maria, Figueroa had tried to join police forces on the mainland, but those opportunities never worked out. Following the storm, Figueroa felt a new urgency to move.

“In this moment, I needed the change for my family, to move to the United States,” Figueroa says.

In February, he received a call asking if he would talk the next day with Sheriff Leon Lott of the Richland County Sheriff’s Department. Figueroa agreed.

Lott told Figueroa he saw videos of the helicopter rescues and asked if Figueroa would come work for Richland County. He agreed and began working here in May.

“Once I found out about his heroic acts, I knew he was what we needed in Richland County — a real hero,” Lott says.

“I was very impressed with his professionalism and dedication.”

The February phone call wasn’t the first time Figueroa talked to Lott. In 2014, Lott visited Puerto Rico and its police department, including the air unit. Figueroa had landed and cut off his helicopter engines when Lott approached, conversed and gave the pilot a card. Figueroa put the card in his flight suit pocket.

“The sheriff said, ‘You can work with me. This is my phone number,’” he recalls.

Figueroa can’t explain how, but the card disappeared. Maybe his opportunity for a better life was gone too. Figueroa has come to believe that the sheriff’s card was meant to go missing.

“God kept me so I could continue working in Puerto Rico and help all the people during the hurricane,” Figueroa says.

This story was originally published August 31, 2018 at 10:49 AM.