Post by copperkid3 on Feb 1, 2016 2:21:37 GMT -5
On the morning of June 11, 1998, Jonathan Aujay pulled his white Ford pickup into Devil’s Punchbowl Natural Area,
60 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles in the Antelope Valley. It was a Thursday, and Aujay had the day off
from his job as a K9-unit dog handler with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. At around 11:45 a.m. he
spread a sunshade across his windshield and locked the truck, which he had filled at a gas station en route to the
park from his Palmdale home. He slung a forest green daypack over his shoulders and set out for a run. He had told his wife,
Debra, that he would be home by dark. Before his swearing in as a deputy 18 years earlier, Aujay (pronounced O-jay) had been
a paratrooper in the Army’s Special Forces unit. At 38, he still wore his brown hair in a military buzz cut. He had a tattoo of the
U.S. Army Eagle on his left biceps; on the right one, an old tattoo of Yosemite Sam had been covered with the letters SEB.
An elite unit, the Special Enforcement Bureau handles SWAT and K9 operations for the sheriff’s department, negotiating hostage situations
and serving warrants on sometimes-volatile suspects, among other tasks. Aujay worked nights so that he could be in the thick of the action,
and he was reliable and conscientious, seldom calling in sick or using his vacation time.
www.lamag.com/longform/the-deputy-who-disappeared/
Jon Aujay went for a desert run in 1998 and never returned. A member of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Special Enforcement Bureau,
he seemed to have evaporated into the hot blue sky. Theories, suspicions, hunches—
they’ve all been far more plentiful than actual clues in the search to discover his fate.
60 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles in the Antelope Valley. It was a Thursday, and Aujay had the day off
from his job as a K9-unit dog handler with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. At around 11:45 a.m. he
spread a sunshade across his windshield and locked the truck, which he had filled at a gas station en route to the
park from his Palmdale home. He slung a forest green daypack over his shoulders and set out for a run. He had told his wife,
Debra, that he would be home by dark. Before his swearing in as a deputy 18 years earlier, Aujay (pronounced O-jay) had been
a paratrooper in the Army’s Special Forces unit. At 38, he still wore his brown hair in a military buzz cut. He had a tattoo of the
U.S. Army Eagle on his left biceps; on the right one, an old tattoo of Yosemite Sam had been covered with the letters SEB.
An elite unit, the Special Enforcement Bureau handles SWAT and K9 operations for the sheriff’s department, negotiating hostage situations
and serving warrants on sometimes-volatile suspects, among other tasks. Aujay worked nights so that he could be in the thick of the action,
and he was reliable and conscientious, seldom calling in sick or using his vacation time.
www.lamag.com/longform/the-deputy-who-disappeared/
Jon Aujay went for a desert run in 1998 and never returned. A member of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Special Enforcement Bureau,
he seemed to have evaporated into the hot blue sky. Theories, suspicions, hunches—
they’ve all been far more plentiful than actual clues in the search to discover his fate.