"Send an ambulance! Officer down!" was the call Lincoln County Sheriff's Deputy Ed Bracamonte made to the department's dispatch early afternoon of March 13. And then, there was silence.

It was the call no one wants to make, or hear.

Deputies Bracamonte, J.R. Romo and Minerva Davalos had just arrived at the scene where Lincoln Sheriff's Office Sgt. Robert Shepperd lay shot in his department SUV at the end of a dead-end driveway in Ruidoso Downs.

"We had, just minutes before, left Magistrate Court and were headed to eat some lunch," said Davalos in recall. "We heard Robert on the radio saying he was in pursuit, Code 3 (lights and siren), on Parkway and we all said, 'Let's go. Now!' We didn't even know who he was chasing."

Deputy David Hightower was just ahead of them, turning up a street to try to intercept the chase. Coming close behind them from somewhere along the route was Deputy Charlie LaBelle.

Davalos said they thought Shepperd might be in foot in pursuit, and not knowing where for sure, they decided to first, find his unit. Almost immediately, they spotted it rolled back in a ditch. As they drove closer, they saw the shattered window in the driver side door.

"J.R. was the first to reach Robert's unit," she said. "He shouted out, 'He's in the unit. He's hurt.'"

Bracamonte radioed for help while Minerva rushed to Shepperd's vehicle. "He was slouched over to the side and his eyes were open," she said. "It was like he was trying to talk but couldn't but his eyes kept saying something. We could see blood on his mouth, his head and on his arm."

Still not sure of the extent of his injuries, even the bullet hole in his forehead appearing to be only a laceration, in a surreal moment of anguish for his fellow cops, they lifted Robert from the front seat and laid him on the ground.

A Ruidoso Downs EMT was quickly on the scene assessing the injuries to the officer. Cutting away his shirt, they saw the bloody foam coming from the wound under his left arm, indicating a punctured lung.

Davalos said she held Robert's head and kept talking to him, telling him he would be OK. "I could see that he could hear me and I knew as long as I could keep him hearing me, it would be OK."

Robert's story

Two weeks after the shooting, Robert Shepperd sat upright in a padded chair next to his bed in a soft beige colored room of a rehabilitation hospital in Las Cruces. His face was covered in short whiskers for lack of a recent shave and his head was rough shaven after the surgery to remove a bullet from his brain. It added a ruggedness to his otherwise pale, drawn countenance.

The road from where he lay critically wounded that fated day to where he sat last Friday, was a two-week drug-induced blur of round-the-clock critical care activity, surgeries and the worried faces as he lay in El Paso's Thomason Hospital where he had been airlifted from Lincoln County Medical Center.

With his broken jaw wired shut and a hole in his throat where a tracheal tube had been, Shepperd labored to talk in a low raspy voice.

"The last thing I remember was them sticking needles in my chest when I lay on the ground," he said recalling the EMTs efforts to relieve the trauma of his collapsed lung. "I remember seeing Minerva and thinking, 'why is she here? She isn't on my shift.' The next thing I knew, I was waking up in ICU in El Paso."

Executing warrants out of Washington State for identity theft and fleeing an officer the, law enforcement agencies had been looking for Kurt Sohrbeck in the Ruidoso area since the day before Shepperd actually spotted him.

Shepperd detailed the events of March 13, much as he had for a state police investigator two days after the shooting.

"Driving by, I saw Kurt Sohrbeck at a car lot in Ruidoso Downs. He was talking to the owner or a salesman or something. I pulled over and approached him. He wouldn't look at me but I asked him if he had I.D. He said 'yes' and started for his pickup. I asked him if that was a pit bull in his pickup and he said 'yes.' I told him to stop. He didn't and I reached out and grabbed his shirt and he took off at a run. I did not chase him because I did not want to deal with him and the pit bull. I had gotten information that the pit bull would attack me. So I ran back to my unit."

Coughing, Shepperd reached for a drink of water to hydrate his throat and continued, pressing the gauze against his throat to close the hole to allow the necessary air to flow over his vocal chords.

"As we took out of the car lot, I radioed in that I was in pursuit. I went up one street and then another and then he turned right into a driveway and stopped. As I rolled up on him, he was already running towards me, shooting at me" he said.

"The first shot, through the driver's side window, took my left arm out," he recalled with clarity. "I had a decision about what to do - keep going forward and run him over or put it in reverse and try to get away from the situation. I put it in reverse. I heard four shots. I remember trying to grab my radio with my right hand and it wouldn't work. And I remember my police car rolling off the side of the road."

Shepperd said he didn't feel the other bullets hit him. "The last thing I remember was trying to say something and I spit up blood. And that was it. The next thing I remember was hearing voices when Minerva was keeping me alert and the voices of other EMS and police. I was on the ground."

"I had not a clue how bad I was hurt," he said. "I thought it had blown my left arm off because I drive with the left hand on the wheel and when the bullet hit, it threw my arm across my chest."

According to Shepperd, the next two shots went through the windshield and into his upper right chest and shoulder area where they fragmented, sending lethal lead to his jaw, lodge in his esophagus, through to his back and enroute, severing nerves that left his right arm useless. The final shot hit him in the forehead.

While no gun has been found and no ballistics information released, Shepperd said he believes he was shot with a .44 caliber pistol that was reportedly in Sohrbeck's possession.

"Each shot had to go through something before it hit me," he said. "That saved me."

"Those bullets didn't do more damage because God didn't want them to do more damage," he added solemnly. "When he shot me the first time, that's all I did was pray."

The fugitive's end

Shepperd said when he heard Sohrbeck had been shot, he was relieved. "Not relieved that he was shot, but that he had been found. Like I said on the news [Albuquerque's KOAT Channel 7], Sohrbeck was somebody's son and he was somebody's brother. Me and my family's condolences go out to that family," he said with sincere empathy.

Lincoln County Sheriff Rick Virden was in the hospital room with Shepperd when the call of Sohrbeck's shooting came. He was awaiting the arrival of the television film crew and producer of the show "America's Most Wanted"   to arrive for an interview. He told Shepperd what the report was and then made a call to divert the AMW crew to the shooting scene near Cloudcroft.

"He stayed with me until it was confirmed," Shepperd said. "Kurt Sohrbeck created his own fate when he was ordered by the Otero County Deputy to stop or pull his hands out of whatever the order was. That was all he had to do."

"I'm not going to say I'm happy that he was shot. What I am going to say is that I'm happy this part of this ordeal is over with because now, I can concentrate on me and trying to rebuild my life that he took away from me."

Recovery

With recovery speed that has amazed everyone from the doctors to the waiting population of Lincoln County, Shepperd arrived at his home Wednesday afternoon, April 2 -- one day short of three weeks since the incident.

Pushing every limit set before him, Shepperd is already doing things with his disabled arm and injured body that doctors said he wouldn't be able to do. His very aggressive nature is serving him well as he pushes toward a full recovery. It will be a few weeks before his jaw is unwired, but in the meantime, he will immediately start more therapy in Alamogordo.

The question, hanging heavy in the room for everyone, has been "Will he go back to work as a cop?"

Shepperd responded to the query with an emphatic "yes" accompanied by a strong affirming nod. "I will go back if I'm allowed to go back. I will not let the people of Lincoln County down."   Then his sense of humor kicked in and he grinned as he said, "The only way I won't go back is if I win the lottery." Again serious, he professed his desire to become the cop he once was, "if not better."

"My aggressiveness won't change," he said. "But I will try to be more cautious. I will wake up every day knowing, what I knew even before -- a cop's goal, always, is to go home at the end of the day."

The cowboy and cop

Robert Shepperd isn't just a dedicated cop. He is first a cowboy.   Growing up on several ranches in Otero County, he has maintained that lifestyle by ranching on his own along with his law enforcement career. The first thing he wants do when he gets home? "Go look at my cows," he said without hesitation.

Top on his list of goals is to get well enough to resume competition in the summer round of ranch rodeos. "July comes up pretty soon," he said of the first one on the schedule. "But it gives me something to shoot for."

Before he became a certified officer, going fulltime in 1999, he spent numerous years with the New Mexico Mounted Patrol and as a reserve officer for the sheriff's department. At 43, Shepperd has nine years under his belt with the Lincoln County Sheriff's office and a lifetime with the cattle.

Robert and his wife Jamie, originally from Cloudcroft, were childhood friends before marrying 24 years ago. They have two children -- Shane who is in the Air Force and stationed at Holloman, and Shawna, 17, a senior at Cloudcroft High School, soon to be a student at NMSU.

Thank you

The Shepperd's said the kids were continually invaluable help to them during this ordeal, taking care of things at home and the many details while Jamie stayed by Robert's side round the clock at the hospital. That included taking caring of the ranching chores along with the help of Tate Pruett and Mike Hernandez and family.

"And Minerva, she's never left our side," they said as their gaze went to long-time friend and deputy who drove Jamie to El Paso that day and stayed the duration as security, support and help.

Davalos, a veteran cop and the "mother hen" for the deputies, says she is always giving them advice for more caution and care in their jobs. Arriving back at her home Wednesday night, she was ready to return to regular duty Thursday, "to check on my guys." However, she admitted to some pangs of worry in leaving Robert and Jamie.

The list is long and growing of people, businesses and organizations that reached out to help the family in time of need.

"First, we say thank you to everyone for all the prayers," they said. "We know that made the difference."

"The people of Lincoln County, the Sheriff's Office, the Ruidoso Downs and Ruidoso police, City Bank, Wells Fargo, Freda McSwane, Lori Gibson, Ruidoso Realtors --- the list just goes on," Shepperd said as he pointed to the boxes of cards and good wishes lining the wall of the room. "You can't find anywhere in the world the kind of goodness in people that Lincoln County has shown."

"Thank you to all the people who put money in the jar at T.R.'s, to the many police and sheriff associations in El Paso and Las Cruces that helped in so many ways, the Otero Sheriff's office for their escort to the hospital," Jamie   said.

While Jamie was trying to recall the ongoing efforts by so many people, Davalos added one more gift that was a surprise. "Sean and Brenda McCracken from McCracken Flooring are going to put new carpet in your whole house," she said.

A heavy silence fell over the hospital room as tears rolled down both Jamie and Robert's cheeks. In a choked voice Robert said, "I've cried more since this happened than I have cried ever in my whole life. I just feel so humbled, so grateful and so honored with all that people are doing."

"All the dozens of calls and messages have been logged into a book for them to read and to keep," said Davalos.

The new beginning

Robert Shepperd has his priorities in line. His experience was undeniably life-changing and he is so very willing for it to be a positive thing.

"I will look at life every day now from a different perspective," he said. "I took one-step inside death's door, and I came back. I will make it count."

Shepperd's road to restoration By Julie Carter

Finding joy in the freedom of being outdoors, eating food not sucked through a straw and talking with a jaw untethered by wires, Lincoln County Sheriff's Deputy Robert Shepperd has moved into a new phase of his recovery from the March 13 shooting attempt on his life.

Shepperd was shot four times in the head and torso by fugitive Kurt Sohrbeck, when he attempted to execute a warrant for his arrest.

Those that know Shepperd would find some inside humor in knowing he has to actually do exercises to regain his jaw muscle strength and agility for speaking after having it wired shut for a month. However, with decidedly improved ease he shared what his day-to-day life is like now that he is home and focusing on his future.

Shepperd travels to Ruidoso three times a week for two hours of physical therapy that is gradually building back his strength and retraining signals from his brain to the body.

"We lost a week in the transition from the rehab hospital to home and then he had to unexpectedly go back to the El Paso hospital when he coughed up that bullet." said Robert's wife Jamie, " So he only has a few days of therapy so far, but each day that passes I see more and more progress, including in his right hand and arm that, in the beginning, they said he would never use."

Normal things in his life are, now, not just enjoyed, but treasured. "The best part of being home is being able to go outside and not be confined inside a hospital," said Shepperd.

Just days after he came home from the rehab hospital, April 2, he and Jamie made a trip to see his cattle. "I have some new baby calves and things looked good," he said. "I just walked around breathed in the fresh air."

Shepperd returned to El Paso last week to have another bullet removed, the one that went through his upper torso and lodged in his back. They also removed the wires tying his jaw shut, freeing him to talk and eat.

His first food after the unwiring was mashed potatoes with gravy that, he said, "tasted real good" after so long on a liquid diet. Friday was his first real meal where he managed some catfish and coleslaw. He yet to have that first bite of steak he has been dreaming of, but is working his way through soft foods that offer flavors he's not tasted in six weeks.

Shepperd is still facing one more surgery in May to remove the bullet that broke his jaw. Because of its location to major nerves and blood supply, the surgeon is taking extra precautions to let him heal as much as he can before hand.

The three weeks since his initial hospital release have been a busy blur of trips to El Paso, Las Cruces, Alamogordo and Ruidoso for surgeries, therapy sessions and doctor visits. In between those, Shepperd has found pleasure in the getting his family back to "normal."  

Saturday the Shepperd family traveled to Fort Sumner to a pig sale where daughter Shawna could purchase her 2008 fair projects. Nothing more normal to a 4-H and FFA dad than a trip to a pig sale.

  "She got four pigs to show and now she can start working on those," Shepperd said. Shawna, 17 and a senior at Cloudcroft High School, will show livestock in the Otero County Fair and the Southern New Mexico State Fair where her dad is the Swine Show superintendent.

Other special moments Shepperd is thankful for is being able to attend Shawna's FFA banquet and see her off to her to prom last week.

One of Shepperd's biggest frustrations currently is not being able to do what he used to do when it comes to helping Shawna with her show steers. "But I never quit being thankful, every day, that I'm alive," he said.

Shepperd said he is confident he can help others, teach others, how much self-motivation means in fighting the way back from adversity. "You have to keep a positive outlook."

Shepperd said a huge part of his healing has come from the encouragement given by so many people through calls, cards and letters. He continues to be awed by the outpouring of financial help and support from the community.

"It is what has kept my spirits up when I'd start to feel a little down. I've not always been very patient so maybe that is my lesson in this. Learning to be patient to heal." he said. "I read each and every piece of mail that comes. It gets hard some days and the caring and prayers from people have made the difference."

Cards and letters to Shepperd and his family can be sent the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office at P.O. Box 278, Carrizozo, NM   88301.

Shepperd says he doesn't have nightmares about the day of shooting. "I don't remember what I dream when I sleep, but   I do   have a lot of flash backs to those minutes of the shooting. It plays back through my mind. Not what if, but could I have done anything different? I guess I'll always have that," he shared.