22 ALASKA SPORTING JOURNAL AUGUST 2019 | aksportingjournal.com
AS A KID GROWING up in western Oregon,
Grimes’ family didn’t totally live off the
grid, but it was certainly off the beat-
en path. Halfway between Eugene and
Florence on the Oregon coast, Grimes
grew up in the ultimate rural household.
She was so far away from civilization,
she referred to the little “Podunk town”
of Elmira as the closest to the family
home. And even that community was a
45-minute drive.
“We were pretty poor. We hunted,
trapped, fished,” Grimes says. “In the
morning, before I’d hop on the bus to
go to school, during hunting season my
dad would wake me up at friggin’ four in
the morning and we’d go out and hunt
until it was time for me to go to school.”
Grimes, the oldest of five siblings,
experienced even more of a “country”
upbringing when her dad moved the
family to Point Hope, Alaska, a North
Slope community of mostly Native
Alaskans on the Chukchi Sea.
“We were the only white family out
there. (But) we actually integrated real-
ly well into the community out there,”
Grimes says.
(Point Hope would become a rather
sentimental place to Grimes and her
family. “I was reassigned to Point Hope
when I was a North Slope Borough po-lice officer, so it was like coming home.
Being welcomed back into the com-
munity. That was pretty cool. And my
brother also is a police officer up there.
And he’s stationed at Point Hope right
now. So it’s cool because of the deep
family ties to some of the communities
that are up on the slope.”)
Alaska would become home for
Grimes, who would have a family and
ultimately nine years as an officer on
the North Slope. But the widespread
coverage area she was working – her
schedule was two weeks on and two
weeks off – and the chance to be closer
to her kids prompted a move to Wasil-
la, where she joined that Mat-Su Valley
community’s police department.
Things were going well in Wasilla
also three years into her stint there.
“I was the department’s hostage
negotiator, so I was gearing my career
up. I was doing patrol work, I was a
field-training officer for rookies coming
in,” she says. “I was doing all this cool
stuff. It was awesome and I was having
fun. Then, bam.”
Officers around the globe are some-
times injured, or worse, in the line of
duty, a risk of the job. But Grimes was
seriously hurt not in a shootout, a fight
or even while engaged in a high-speedchase. She was simply stopped at a
traffic light on Main Street in Wasilla.
“Out of the blue the inside of my
patrol car just exploded. Glass in slow
motion was just flying around my face.
I felt this really sharp pain in my upper
chest. I thought I’d been shot because it
felt like this instant explosion and then
this searing pain,” she says.
“I didn’t realize at the time that I’d
been hit from behind by a ¾-ton pickupGrowing up almost off the grid in Oregon
before her family moved to Alaska,
Grimes was used to hunting and fishing.
These days she is comfortable on the
Yukon River adjacent to her homestead in
remote Eagle. (GWEN GRIMES)Grimes (right) and her
Naked and Afraid partner
Jon Hart completed their
21-day challenge in the
blazing heat of southern
Mexico. “I was proud of
myself for accomplishing it
on and not letting that stuff
crush me or beat me,” she
says. (DISCOVERY CHANNEL)