Reporter Jenna Hauck rides with the Chilliwack RCMP

May 23, 2023 marks the 150th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. This major historical milestone is a chance to reflect on their storied past and show the pride of the RCMP family. This is one story we’re sharing in honour of the RCMP.

The sun was close to setting when my ride-along journey with Chilliwack RCMP officer Sgt. Krista Vrolyk began.

It was a Friday evening (May 5) and I was trying to figure out what we would see first. A car crash? Break-and-enter in progress? A dangerous suspect resulting in police officers with guns drawn?

I had the theme song to the reality TV show Cops in my head… ‘Bad boys, bad boys.’

Just an hour or two earlier, I was at home talking with my young children about my assignment for the night. I showed them a 30-second intro clip for Cops and within the first few seconds there was footage of police officers darting back and forth trying to catch a runaway zebra.

There are no zoos in Chilliwack, but I thought perhaps I’d see a llama on the loose.

It was a mild spring evening and Vrolyk and I were in a marked cruiser on Hocking Avenue. She suddenly pulled off to the side of the road. There was no crime happening. I looked around and saw nothing.

She got out and I followed, wearing a protective vest with ‘observer’ written on it.

We crossed the street and walked onto the Valley Rail Trail where about half a dozen people were sitting around. Vrolyk approached a woman using drugs who was sitting on the ground all alone and asked her if she was OK. She was. Vrolyk asked her name and chatted briefly with her before walking over to a group of men close by.

Vrolyk was casual and friendly as she spoke with the men. I could tell she cared about them as she listened to what they said.

None of the men appeared impaired, nor were they aggressive. She was simply checking in on them. She asked them where they’d be sleeping that night, which led to one man revealing personal info about what drugs he was addicted to and how he recently had all his personal belongings stolen.

We listened and chatted with them for about five to 10 minutes before Vrolyk reminded them not to leave any garbage lying around, and told them to “stay safe.”

“I can walk up to anybody and just start talking to them,” she said.

This wasn’t a call for a wellness check. She, unlike I, just happened to notice the group sitting on the side of the trail and checked in on them.

A police officer’s head is always on a swivel, she said. They watch for anything unusual or suspicious, their mind often thinking about more than one call at a time – looking for a suspected erratic driver while also keeping an eye open for a suspicious man seen peering into parked cars, or a group of teens with open alcohol.

The calls this night – between 7 p.m. and midnight – were pretty typical for a Friday evening in Chilliwack: a domestic violence call, a suicidal person who called the crisis centre, a break-and-enter, traffic-related concerns, a screwdriver being used as a weapon, and a mischief call for youth drinking and puking in a park, to name a few.

“We’re going to do whatever we need to stay safe because we want to go home to our family at the end of the night, but we’re also going to run into danger to protect people we don’t even know,” Vrolyk said.

She wasn’t doing general duty, so she was free to hop from one call to the next so I could get a taste of many of these calls.

Around 8:30 p.m., officers found and pulled over a suspected impaired driver.

A van with significant front-end damage pulled into a parking lot at a high rate of speed. We headed to the scene at Vedder and Luckakuck where the cops asked the woman to get out of her van. She agreed and, after assessing and investigating the situation, officers determined it was a criminal code case and she was arrested.

Vrolyk encourages people to call in suspicious occurrences. If your Spidey sense is tingling, call it in, she said.

“We can’t be everywhere, so we do rely on the community to be our eyes and ears.”

Because a concerned citizen called in the suspected impaired driver, our streets are safer, she said.

“I think that’s one of the things that the public doesn’t always understand is that sometimes is does take us a couple hours, several hours, to respond,” she said. “Everything is triaged. It’s just like an emergency room. We deal with crimes in progress first. Anything that’s in danger of someone’s safety is first. Any property crime or suspicious circumstances would be a lower priority.”

We hopped around to a variety of other calls. We went down to Garrison where, in recent weeks large groups of teens had been drinking and doing drugs in the neighbourhood. This night, all was clear.

Around 10 p.m., I got a text from my husband.

“Chase any zebras yet?”

No zebras. No llamas either.

There was, however, a mischief call with kids ringing doorbells and running away.

But then a more serious and much more exciting call came in where about 15 shots were heard up in Ryder Lake and then the caller reported hearing a motorcycle drive off.

“Here we go,” Vrolyk said.

She turned east onto Prairie Central Road and gunned it. I peered over at the speedometer and saw it touching 100 kilometres an hour.

Since she wasn’t assigned to the call, she couldn’t attend with lights and sirens going, but we raced to get there anyway. She turned south onto Prest Road only to be slowed down by someone going the speed limit.

She parked the vehicle near the roundabout at Prest and Bailey roads and we waited about 10 minutes to see if a motorcycle would come down the hill, either from Teskey Way or Elk View Road.

No luck.

We left the scene and started to head back into the downtown area. On the way, I asked her what the most rewarding part of her job is.

“Just helping people. I really think it’s an honour to be the face of help for people on, usually, one of the worst days of their life,” she said.

She admitted it’s difficult to deal with the negativity of the job, and the “dark, evil” part of our community does take its toll.

“When you do have somebody say ‘Thanks for your service. I appreciate what you do,’ it goes a really long way.”

She later added one more thing.

“No zebras,” she said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t pull the zebra card for you.”

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