Take the time to remember a border hero
Jan. 26, 2008 12:00 AM

Andri Dukeshier was seated in his friend's car last Saturday morning when this nation's border crisis came hurtling toward him.

For him, it was a getaway weekend with the wife and kids, a family outing to the Imperial Sand Dunes west of Yuma, where they often go to ride quads and camp out with friends.

For U.S. Border Patrol Senior Agent Luis Aguilar Jr., it was another day on the never-ending lookout for the bad guys, the ones who cross the dunes from Mexico, running their drugs and pocketing their profits and to hell with anyone who gets in their way. advertisement

Tragically, Agent Aguilar got in their way.

Chances are, most people didn't hear much about what went on at the border last Saturday morning when a good man lost his life while trying to protect the rest of us. But then hey, it's not like he was an actor who played a gay cowboy.

I called the Border Patrol in Yuma, wondering why the story merited only a few paragraphs.

"That's pretty much what happened nationwide with it," said agent Jeremy Schappell. "He's a federal agent and nobody really cares. For the most part it's pretty much like the border. Who cares? That's honestly my opinion. If you don't live in a border state, if you're not Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico or Texas, what happens on the border really doesn't matter."

It mattered a lot last Saturday to Dukeshier, 31, an air-conditioning installer from Peoria, and to John Jamison, 39, a Phoenix insurance adjuster. Both men were with their families at the Buttercup Camp Area, 20 miles west of Yuma.

The alternator on Dukeshier's truck had gone out, and he and a friend were leaving the campground about 9:30 a.m. to get another in Yuma when a pair of Border Patrol agents came running across the road, motioning them back.

"They opened this box, and they were proceeding to string these tire-blowout things across the road," Dukeshier said. "As they were stringing these spikes across the road, we noticed this H2 Hummer coming toward them."

About 30 minutes earlier, agents had spotted the brown Hummer and a red Ford F-250 pickup coming north through the dunes, up to the Interstate 8 frontage road. It's a popular route for smugglers, what with no fence and plenty of off-road vehicles to blend with.

On this day, however, they were spotted, and as agents attempted to pull them over, they turned back toward Mexico. Only the Buttercup Camp Area stood in their way.

Jamison had just left the campground office and was walking back to his 9- and 11-year-old sons when he heard loud pops, like gunfire or tire blowouts, and saw the approaching Hummer.

"They came through there, 55-60 (mph), and ran over the agent," he said. "They probably drug him from where he was 20 feet or so, made a 45-degree turn out into the sand and just kept going into Mexico."

We don't know a lot about senior agent Luis Aguilar Jr., the man they left to die there on the road. But we know enough. We know he was a 31-year-old husband and father of two. A native of El Paso who joined the Border Patrol six years ago.

We know from witness accounts that some of his last thoughts were of clearing the area and making sure that no innocents came in harm's way last Saturday.

And we know, sadly, there will be more Luis Aguilars, dead on the border, because the bad guys are pushing their way in every day and we aren't yet doing near enough to push back.

"I can't imagine what his family is going through," Dukeshier said. "I can't imagine, especially his partner, just from seeing his reaction afterward. He was getting help, he was asking for people to call, he was asking for helicopters. Then later, I saw him grieving in the back of a truck, his head down. I can't imagine what those people go through, just to keep us safe."
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