When Oakland County Sheriff’s Deputy Kelly Sexton chases criminals, she’s usually thousands of feet above them.
The 1982 Oxford High School graduate and former Addison resident recently joined the Sheriff’s Aviation Unit as its newest pilot. She has the distinction of being the unit’s first and only female pilot.
“Every day is a new adventure,” Sexton said of her new job in the sky.
Sexton has served with the sheriff’s department since February 2000. Prior to that, she was employed as a patrol officer for the now-defunct joint Oxford Police Department, which served both the township and village.
Twenty-five candidates applied for the pilot’s opening, but in the end, it was Sexton who exhibited the right stuff for the job.
“In the beginning, I never thought they would give me the job because I had no prior experience,” she said. “It was a shock when Captain (Damon) Shields called and told me the sheriff wanted me to be the new helicopter pilot. I jumped at the chance.”
Sexton received her 60 hours of flight training at Bijan Air in Ann Arbor in a two-seat Schweizer helicopter, which she described as a “tiny, little” aircraft.
When asked what was the hardest part of her flight training, she immediately replied, “Solo flights.”
“It was very difficult for me. . .the feeling that if something goes wrong or if I make mistake, there’s no one there to save me, but me,” Sexton said. “The first five hours of my solo time was very stressful.”
Sexton’s fears about solo flying abated by the time she was ready for her first “cross-country” flight from Ann Arbor to Adrian to Jackson and back to Ann Arbor.
She explained that each leg of her last solo flight had to be “more than 25 miles.”
“Once I got ready to do that, I was more comfortable,” she said. “I wasn’t as worried, but still, if you make a mistake, it’s hard to come back. It’s all you and you had better be on your toes.”
Sexton received her private pilot’s license in mid-June, but the training didn’t end there.
She then had to fly with a sheriff’s instructor until the beginning of August in order to learn how to operate the department’s two helicopters, which were larger, more complex machines compared to the little Schweizer she had trained on.
The sheriff’s department’s air units are American Euro-copters, made in France.
“This is a big aircraft,” Sexton said. “It can be a handful.”
The biggest difference between the two helicopters is that the rotors on the American Euro-copter spin clockwise whereas the Schweizer’s rotors move counter-clockwise.
Because of this significant difference, Sexton said she basically had to “unlearn” and “relearn” how to fly.
“Everything was backwards” on the sheriff’s helicopters, she said. “I had to be trained twice. I’m still learning.”
With the sheriff’s helicopters, Sexton said the “most challenging” part is learning how to land on the 12-foot X 14-foot trailers, upon which the helicopters are stored.
“It looks big on the ground, but if you’re coming down on it, it’s nothing,” she said. “It’s like trying to land on a dime.”
As one of the unit’s four pilots, Sexton flies the day shift, which is 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Approximately four of the eight hours in a shift is spent in the air, she said.
“As a new pilot, it gets mentally exhausting for me after two hours because there’s just so much going on,” Sexton said.
As she gains more flight experience, Sexton said she will be able to better tolerate longer periods of flight.
When asked what’s her favorite part of patroling with the Aviation Unit, Sexton immediately replied, “Helping catch the bad guys.
She explained how the helicopter’s “bird’s eye view” helped catch a breaking and entering suspect in Independence.
The suspect fled into an area full of brush and tried to “lay low” there.
“We circled the area and were able to keep a good perimeter until the K-9 Unit could arrive and flush him out,” she said. “We can spot a person much quicker than an officer in a vehicle can because of our bird’s eye view.”
Sexton said the helicopter’s aerial view is also a valuable tool when it comes to searching for missing persons or stolen vehicles, following car chases, assessing the severity of traffic accidents and helping firefighters on the ground locate “hot spots” in burning structures.
In addition to providing assistance and air support for sheriff’s deputies on the ground, the Aviation Unit provides assistance and back-up to the county’s 42 independent police agencies, Sexton said.
“When we’re up in the air, we monitor all the police radios in the county, ready to assist,” she said.
When asked her opinion of view from her new office in the sky, Sexton replied, “It’s awesome. At 3,000 feet on a nice clear day, you can see Lake St. Clair and downtown Detroit. You can see forever, which is pretty neat.”