The Park City Elks Lodge honored area first responders on Saturday during a ceremony held as crews continued to fight a wildfire on the East Side of Summit County.

The efforts to stop the Rocky Canyon Fire were noted at the Rotary Park gathering of personnel from various emergency agencies, as the Elks Lodge named those selected for the annual awards.

The event drew dozens of emergency responders and their families for a barbecue and the awards ceremony. It is among the largest gatherings of emergency agencies in Park City each year.

“We’re indebted to these first responders in a way we can never pay back,” said Michael DeJarnette, the exalted ruler of the local Elks Lodge.

He said Park City is an active community that requires the work of the first responders. He also said there is danger of avalanches, fires, flash floods and crime. DeJarnette said there is “such a high level of safety and order” in the community.

“We just know they’re there if something goes wrong,” he said. “They’re willing to put the community first, citizens first, and take risks not everyone is willing to take.”

Each honoree received a $250 check and gift cards to local businesses. They were also given the opportunity to allocate a $1,000 scholarship at their discretion.

The honorees, with biographical information compiled by the Elks Lodge:

Hudson Zwahlen was the Park City Fire District firefighter of the year. Zwahlen has worked for the district for over six years, advancing clinical expertise and earning certifications as a flight paramedic and in critical care. He is also a member of the team assigned to wildland fires and the medic for Summit County SWAT.

“His commitment to advanced prehospital medicine, mentoring developing paramedics, and serving the community where he was born and raised makes him an exceptional representative of our district,” the Elks Lodge says.

Gabrielle Longchamp was the Park City Fire District EMS paramedic of the year. Longchamp arrived at the district in 2023 with a background in subjects like neuroscience, biotechnology and hospital care. She also brought experience in ski patrol and outdoor rescues. Longchamp finished paramedic school and is trained as an EMS instructor.

“Gabrielle’s dedication also extends to supporting her fellow first responders, including completing a 50-kilometer trail race to raise funds for the Responder Alliance Foundation,” the Elks Lodge says.

Jake Odom was the Utah Highway Patrol trooper of the year in the agency’s Section 7. Odom is from Georgia, arrived in Utah nine years ago as a student at the University of Utah, and began his time at the Highway Patrol in 2023. He has been a corporal since December.

The Elks Lodge says the trooper “has been awarded a Medal of Excellence for stopping a wrong way driver” and became a certified motor officer, Section 7’s first. He has been a key in training troopers as well, according to the Elks Lodge.

Katie James was the Park City Police Department’s officer of the year. James, a detective, started her work with the agency in 2023 and worked in law enforcement in California previously. She has “established herself as an exceptional investigator whose professionalism, work ethic, and commitment to serving others have consistently exceeded expectations throughout her law enforcement career,” according to the Elks Lodge.

“Detective James has demonstrated remarkable perseverance by taking ownership of challenging cases that require patience, creativity and relentless follow through. Rather than focusing solely on case disposition, she remains committed to ensuring victims receive the attention, compassion, and advocacy they deserve throughout the investigative process. Her dedication has earned the respect of victims, fellow investigators, prosecutors, and partner agencies alike,” the information states.

Sgt. Zachary Howick was the Summit County Sheriff’s Office deputy of the year. Howick has been crucial to the agency’s off-highway vehicle, or OHV, program. He has “been instrumental in identifying equipment needs, acquiring and implementing new OHV platforms and trailers, developing operational plans, and ensuring the unit is prepared to meet the increasing demands placed upon it,” the Elks Lodge says. He played an important role in the efforts to combat the Beulah Fire in 2025 in the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest.

“Recognizing the rapidly evolving nature of the incident, Sergeant Howick effectively organized and deployed OHV resources to areas inaccessible to traditional emergency vehicles. His foresight, decisive leadership, and operational planning allowed evacuation efforts to begin quickly, contributing to an organized and efficient evacuation process that enhanced public safety and supported the broader incident objectives,” according to the Elks Lodge.

Kevan Todd was the Summit County Search & Rescue first responder of the year. Todd has been involved with Summit County Search & Rescue as a 34-year volunteer. “Search and Rescue has never been just about finding lost hikers or responding to emergencies. For Kevan, it has been about people. Through countless training exercises, late-night callouts, difficult rescues, and shared victories, he has formed lifelong friendships with fellow volunteers and their families,” the Elks Lodge says.

The biographical information continued: “Over the years, Kevan has experienced moments that have forever changed his perspective on life. From helping reunite families to providing comfort during someone’s darkest hour, every rescue has reinforced the value of compassion, teamwork, and service. While the work has often been physically demanding and emotionally challenging, it has also been deeply rewarding. Knowing that he has been able to make a difference in the lives of others is something he considers one of the greatest blessings of his life.”

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A passenger died on Sunday in a rollover crash on Interstate 80 near Coalville.

The Utah Department of Public Safety said a car was traveling westbound at 11:30 a.m. on I-80 near milepost 159 when it left the roadway, overturned and collided with a concrete irrigation ditch.

The front passenger died at the scene, the report said. The driver and a rear passenger were transported to an area hospital with critical injuries.

State troopers are investigating the reason for the crash. The identities of those involved have not been released as of Monday.

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The Park City Police Department and the Utah Highway Patrol conducted a mid-April operation targeting truck safety, with nearly half of the inspected vehicles being removed from service based on violations discovered during the effort.

The operation occurred during the morning of April 16. Police Department logs indicated the trucks were generally stopped along the Kearns Boulevard corridor, including near the Park City School District campus.

The logs provided limited details. In one case at 8:29 a.m., the stopped vehicle was a dump truck that was towing a flatbed. Another case at 11:58 a.m. involved a dump truck without a license plate, according to the logs. The police in two cases stopped drivers whose vehicles had been inspected earlier in the day.

The Police Department released statistics from the operation that included:

• 18 trucks were inspected.
• 8 were removed from service.
• 1 driver was removed from service.
• 100 combined violations.
• 26 combined violations that were serious enough to remove the vehicles from service.

In a prepared response to a Park Record inquiry about the operation, Danielle Snelson, a Police Department lieutenant, said the operation was “focused on improving roadway safety through commercial vehicle inspections.”

“Officers inspected trucks and trailers for compliance with state and federal safety standards. Certain violations can result in a vehicle being placed out of service, including poorly adjusted brakes, improper load securement, an unqualified or improperly licensed driver, or unsafe equipment such as flat tires,” she said.

Snelson added: “These proactive efforts help identify potential issues before they lead to crashes and keep all motorists safer on our roads.”

Images provided by the Police Department showed the operation unfolding in the parking lot at Park City High School, with the authorities checking tires during two of the inspections.

The inspections were timed during the early weeks of the traditional building season in Park City. Construction traffic typically increases in the summer and fall along the entryways and through the neighborhoods where work is occurring.

The safety of construction vehicles has long been of note in Park City. The condition of the brakes has been of special concern in a community with so many streets having steep grades.

There has been a series of accidents in Park City over the decades involving trucks headed to or from construction sites, with many having been blamed on brake failures on steep streets. The section of S.R. 224 south of Old Town, also known as the Mine Road, is notorious for brake failures. Some of those accidents have been serious, and a runaway-truck ramp was constructed on the road years ago.

One of the accidents, in the summer of 2021, involved a dump truck crashing into two cars in the area of the Old Town roundabout. The brakes failed before the accident, the Utah Highway Patrol said at the time. Park City Fire District images from that scene showed the truck had struck a stone wall and suffered extensive damage to the front.

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Hundreds of kids who had been buzzing with excitement behind start lines at the Heber City Police Department on Saturday morning were off like Olympic sprinters as soon as they heard the blare of an airhorn coming through the speakers.

Their target? As many of the 12,600 plastic Easter eggs that had been scattered across the lawn as they could get their little hands on.

The lawn was spotless within 10 minutes. 

“If only they were picking up dog (poop) in the backyard,” joked grandfather Troy Palmer from the sidelines.

Palmer lives in Orem but came up to Heber City for the weekend to visit his daughter and son-in-law, Kaylee and Alex Agin, and their four children.

The kids were quick to scurry back to their parents and grandpa, loot in hand, from the various sections of the lawn. Each was designated for a different division: children under 1 year old, those aged 1 to 4, 5 to 10, 11 to 13 and those with physical or intellectual disabilities.

Hunter, 12, recalled the moment the airhorn sounded without warning.

“I was just standing there, and then I just heard, ‘beep!’ and saw everyone else running. I didn’t think it was going to go off like that,” he rambled quickly.

Hunter and his family have attended the Wasatch County first responders’ Easter egg hunt through all three of its iterations, but this event saw Hunter’s best performance. He nabbed about 30 colorful eggs and stuffed them into a plastic grocery bag. His strategy, picking up multiple eggs with each hand instead of one at a time, had paid off. 

Hunter’s 10-year-old brother, Jagger, returned with a much different spoil of war: an egg-shaped, 16-inch-tall Squishmallow. The brown stuffed animal looked like a bat, but its tag revealed it to be a goblin king named Ambergris.

There were over 100 of Ambergris’ brethren spread out across the lawn. It wasn’t quite the “battle” between children Palmer had been expecting. Many kids went home content, their own goblin king in hand.

Heber City Police Sgt. Zac Hendricksen, who organized this year’s egg hunt, explained the Squishmallows were a bit of an Easter miracle, albeit an unconventional one.

About three weeks before the event, a local landlord donated roughly 125 Squishmallows to the Police Department. She had evicted a tenant who had defaulted on rent. That tenant owned a small army of Squishmallows — ultra popular, super-soft collectible plush toys shaped like various animals or foods — that were still in the box, but she apparently refused to retrieve them despite the landlord’s attempts to return them. 

Police officers picked up the Squishmallows from the landlord using the Police Department’s 26-foot-long enclosed motorcycle trailer. According to Hendricksen, the trailer was nearly overflowing with boxes.

“I don’t think we’ll have that opportunity next year,” he said with a laugh.

The first responders’ Easter egg hunt began three years ago as the brainchild of Chief Parker Sever. It’s only gotten bigger each year, expanding last year to add a pancake breakfast. Sever estimated that around 1,000 people came this year. The jam-packed parking in the blocks surrounding the Police Department seemed to support that fact.

Organizing the Easter egg hunt was a collaborative effort between the Police Department, Wasatch County Sheriff’s Office and Fire District, Department of Natural Resources and Utah Highway Patrol. 

The latter agency brought its car crash simulator — two bumper cars mounted on a trailer — to teach kids the importance of wearing a seatbelt while letting them crash into each other at 5 mph. 

Meanwhile, inmates booked into the Wasatch County Jail volunteered to help fill the 12,600 eggs. Local Latter-day Saint youth groups pitched in, too.

“I’ll be honest with you, this is about a month’s worth of work for a lot of people,” Hendricksen said. “So, it’s kind of nice to have it behind us.”

Hendricksen said the egg hunt is a good way for local law enforcement to connect with community members.

“Sometimes people are just scared of cops, so then, when they get to come out and see them in this aspect, it makes them know that we’re all human,” he said.

The egg hunt also allows Sever to operate his “candy cannon,” which uses pressurized air to shoot candy through a muzzle made of PVC pipe. 

“If you put too much pressure, though, it just blows all the wrappers off the candy,” Sever explained.

He was speaking from experience. The contraption, created in his garage a few years ago, involved a lot of trial and error.

Many kids jumped around with excitement as candy shot up in the air and rained down from the sky. But not all were impressed with Sever’s invention.

Pouting as though she were about to burst into tears, 8-year-old Riley Pettee whined, “I don’t like it because something hit me in the head.”

But she cheered right up when she showed off her bag full of eggs. Plastering a smug grin on her face, she bragged that the egg hunt had been “easy.”

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Utah Highway Patrol troopers arrested a man who allegedly brandished a gun in a road rage incident on Interstate 80 over the weekend.

Emergency dispatchers received a report around 10:55 a.m. Saturday, stating the driver of a black Land Rover had flipped the complainant off and raised a silver pistol while looking “visibly upset,” according to the arrest report.

State troopers waited approximately 10 miles down the road from where the incident was reported. They watched the Land Rover pass and “observed [the] driver leaning to the right and reaching over the center console.”

Summit County Sheriff’s Office deputies responded to the area to assist with the arrest, and law enforcement officials initiated a high-risk traffic stop.

“I verbally called the driver out at gunpoint and placed him in handcuffs,” one trooper wrote in the arrest report. “He told us that the firearm was under the seat. … [We were] able to locate the firearm wedged in between the front passenger seat and the center console. The firearm was loaded, and the upper slide of the pistol was silver in color.”

The driver of the Land Rover was arrested for allegedly threatening to use a dangerous weapon in a fight, but no official criminal charges have been filed yet in Summit County’s Third District Court.

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The Utah Highway Patrol arrested a driver allegedly involved in two different wrong-way accidents on April 29.

Summit County Dispatch alerted troopers to the first crash around 4:23 p.m. and asked them to locate the vehicle on Interstate 80 near Coalville.

Troopers found the car and witnessed the driver enter the highway from the wrong direction for a second time, crashing into the center barrier before they were able to intercept the vehicle.

Law enforcement stopped the car and contacted the driver, who had “a strong odor of alcohol coming from his breath,” according to the report. Troopers also observed the driver displayed signs of impairment and had “red, bloodshot” and “glossy” eyes.

“The male driver made excited … statements about how drunk he was and to just haul him away,” the report states.

Troopers conducted initial field sobriety tests, and the driver allegedly failed all of them. He then refused to take any further tests.

“During the inventory of the vehicle, two firearms were located that belonged to the male driver,” the report says. “One firearm was a loaded .45 caliber pistol. The other firearm was a load with one in the chamber AR-style rifle with an extended magazine.”

The man was arrested on two counts of carrying a dangerous weapon under the influence of alcohol, as well as wrong-way driving under the influence of alcohol.

Troopers transported him to the Summit County Jail, where he was ordered to be released as long as he promises to appear for all court proceedings, refrains from possessing any weapons and does not “purchase, possess or consume alcohol.”

The release conditions also prohibit the man from frequenting “any place where alcohol is the chief item of sale,” such as a liquor store or bar.

The 42-year-old driver has a series of prior citations and misdemeanors involving traffic violations and intoxication, mostly centered in the Davis County area.

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