Nye County Sheriff’s team returns to race

The Nye County Sheriff’s Office fielded a team in the annual Baker to Vegas run for the first time since 2013. On Saturday, about 8,000 law enforcement and support personnel involved with the race ran through Pahrump without any major incidents.

The race is put on each year by the Los Angeles Police Revolver and Athletic Club. The relay teams lined up just outside the town of Baker, California, which is just some 77 miles to the west of Pahrump. The teams are entirely made up of law enforcement personnel and each team consists of 20. The distance for each team member varies. Some are selected to run 3-4 mile legs while others will run 10-mile legs.

The Nye County team finished 31st out of 33 teams (20 hours, 48 minutes, 24 seconds) in the mixed category. The fastest team in their category was the San Diego probation team (15:26:03).

Sheriff Sharon Wehrly said she gave the team all the support she could and made the event a priority.

“I am all for this team,” she said. “We wanted to run in this and so we had a management meeting and made this happen and Sergeant KayCee Otteson ran with it,” Wehrly said. “We didn’t train as much as we should have because of a deputy shortage, but our team did a wonderful job.”

The sheriff said that Otteson was helped by Sergeant Eric Murphy. In the past, the department had problems fielding a team because they lacked runners. Wehrly said that they received help from other agencies like the Nye County District Attorney’s office, Las Vegas Metro, and the Nevada Highway Patrol.

With the success of this year’s team, the sheriff’s office hopes to be out running next year too.

“We plan to field a team next year and we are already working on that,” Wehrly said.

The annual race was won by the Los Angeles Police Department Department open team (12:59:35).

In the past the race has been a grudge match between the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. This year the LASD’s fastest team was the LASD County Wide team and they finished second to the LAPD team in the open category (13:04:38).

The fastest women’s team was also LAPD (15:52:29).

The race ran through Pahrump via Highway 372 and then the course followed Highway 160 into Las Vegas.

George Arceo and his wife Denise enjoyed watching the teams leave Pahrump.

“We sat out there and cheered the teams on at Manse and Highway 160,” George Arceo said. “We did this knowing we had deputies from our town running. This was the first time in a couple of years so we thought we would support them. We got the crowd going, blowing our horn every time a runner went by.”

The following is a list of deputies from the Nye County Sheriff’s Office that ran the race:

Leg 1, Paul Chaffee; leg 2, M. Cleavland; leg 3, Wesley Fancher; leg 4, P. Sherwood; leg 5, J. Dubois; leg 6, Christopher Hopson; leg 7, S. Sweet; leg 8, Kirk Vitto; leg 9, T. Andrus; leg 10, Alvin Hill; leg 11, Carlos Rivera; leg 12, E. Anderson; leg 13, T. Healing; leg 14, P. Daly; leg 15, J. Sullivan; leg 16, Katlyn Ferrel; leg 17, Elias Armendariz; leg 18, C. Barajas; leg 19, Alexander Cox; leg 20, James McRae. Alt. 1, KayCee Otteson; alt. 2, B. Cooper; alt. 3, Eric Murphy; alt. 4, J. Bissel; alt. 5, Shawn Locascio.

Contact sports editor Vern Hee at vhee@pvtimes.com