In 2002, I was reticent at the prospect of taking on an assignment to cover the 15th anniversary of the Jessica McClure rescue.

Although I had been targeted a year and a half earlier to take on the role of police and courts reporter for the Midland Reporter-Telegram after graduation from college due to my background as a native Midlander, I hadn’t mentioned to editors how close I had been to the story as a fourth-grade student in 1987. My grandparents lived a few houses down from where the toddler who would come to be known as “Baby Jessica”. Moreover, the memory stood out to me from that morning of the rescue in October when we heard police sirens scream into the mid-morning classroom lesson.

Considering my role and work with police and firefighters locally, it made total sense for the anniversary/ rescue story to be mine. A complete retelling of the event hadn’t made it into the MRT pages for quite a few years, and yet to be discovered was the real prospect of thorough package of stories in a two-day series.

I walked through the neighborhood on a particularly ideal fall day in October. Sunny and bright outside, I stopped by to speak with neighbors and kicked off the initial interviews. Almost immediately, the story began to unfold as I talked with Marie Petronella, the neighbor directly next door to the house who heard Jessica’s mother, Reba “Cissy” McClure call for help. Petronella said she called police that morning and described the events with vivid detail.

As I made my way back down the street after a long interview, it became clear that while the entire world seemingly held the story of the Baby Jessica in their minds, there was much more to what the event actually meant to the world.

Daunting is no way to describe what crews faced. Obstacle after obstacle emerged as if devised in the spirit of the great Greek myth The Odyssey that made Penelope’s challenges look like a kids game. Yet, rescuers and volunteers persevered.

Providential, perhaps, but certainly a spirit of unity and community emerged to bring the world together to bring Jessica McClure to the surface. Resources first began pouring in locally as roughnecks and caving experts arrived on scene to help descend into a rescue shaft and operate powerful, heavy drills. Then, from all over the U.S. offers for help emerged. Then, internationally, offers for help and advanced equipment made their way into the Permian Basin.

That series of stories to convey the enormity of the rescue is a challenge. People look back on their own histories, and it can be difficult to sort out truth from a self-fulfilling retelling. Often, it is clear when you have a source whose relationship with stark truth is a bit loose, but with enough prying for details, clarity, and description, you can usually get to the layers of accuracy and truth that lack the self promotion that plague some historical accounts. As these interviews sometimes go, additional probing with sincere and authentic curiosity as an interviewer usually leads to some self-correcting.

Media underpinning

To me, the story of Midland, Texas, on a world stage stood out. With a population of about 100,000 and a sister city less than 20 miles away of approximately the same size, the area is not exactly something that could be described as “small town”. Rather, it is somewhat signfiicant in size, but Midland and the Permian Basin itself if a giant as it figures into the international economy. Still, that’s not what drew such a large media response to the story. It felt like an important aspect to introduce into the narrative to fully explain and explore why editors, producers, and reporters were so compelled to cover the scene. Newsworthy, certainly, I wanted to explore more intently on why the coverage was so intense and why it resonated with audiences for decades.

Dark economic skies and the world stage

I felt it was important to highlight how the oil and gas economy affected the area. The oil bust is almost a character itself.

It’s difficult to get people to fully see that if there isn’t a latent interest or curiosity for the international oil and gas economy. As part of the research, eventually excepted from the book, I found detailed reports from the CIA outlining the effect of OPEC actions on regional economies in the U.S. While somewhat arterial to the story, it’s not tangential, and as we see today, the price per barrell of oil carries plenty of weight nationally and especially in the Permian Basin.

But, by telling the stories of the people affected by the economic downturn, it reveals the juxtaposition locals felt and ultimately helped illustrate the mindset of West Texans. Knowing the anything is possible even in the worst of circumstances fuels much of the optimistic sense in the Permian Basin, and as challenge after challenge emerged in the rescue, it aligned well with the mentality that goes with the experience of living in West Texas.

Inexplicable tragedy

It’s hard to imagine how someone could fall from grace after participating in the heroic efforts to save Jessica McClure. Much in the same way, an aspiring leader slowly works his or her way up a mountain, it can work in the opposite way as well: One step at a time. Incrementally, we reveal how Robert O’Donnell ended up watching television news coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing as new heros emerged. In that moment, as his mother recalled later, he pointed to the screen and said, “Those people are going to need help for a long time.”

Stigma and the backdrop of PTSD

The story of Robert O’Donnell sat vaguely in the back of my mind as some had told me over the years with a retelling that felt more like rumor than fact. Like many others, I had heard opaque whispers of a tragic history of the firefighter-paramedic’s life following the rescue.

In an early interview with Vaughn Donaldson, who himself had worked with O’Donnell as a firefighter with the Midland Fire Department, I learned more about what O’Donnell experienced not only as he handled media requests but also as a coworker dealing with internal squabbles and jealousies. He revealed how Steve Forbes, the firefighter-paramedic who emerged from the rescue shaft with Jessica in his arms, began to see the struggles O’Donnell had. As a result, Forbes refused any additional response for media interviews and returned to his normal life as a firefighter.

O’Donnell, on the other hand, maintained his role and repeatedly revisiting the rescue triumph among coworkers.

Recognition of the issue might have been difficult in the 1980s and 1990s. As a mental health issue, the idea of PTSD was largely stigmatized. And some of those in leadership later exhibited a lack of interest, curiosity, responsibility and emphathy, it could be argued that a level of negligence revealed itself among those in O’Donnell’s orbit. To his credit, Donaldson began transitioning his career to explore trends and issues associated with PTSD among first responders, and his career aligned with the broad arc toward awareness that today makes resources available to those experiencing trauma in one form or another as a first responder or member of the military.

Public service and the first responder community

Originally, as the book was intended, I figured a theme of public service among first responders would loom large. It aligned with my personal interests and values, and I thought a throughline would emerge so that I could help advance the value for service beyond self.

Though those tendencies and values exist in the first responder community, a plague of self-interest and self-preservation largely dominated the story. And where it might have existed only for a moment like a disease, those characteristics were nonetheless destructive especially where power was pronounced and where accountability had for too long incrementally been set aside.