Chris Smith: Monte Rio Fire Chief gets vaccine to prove its safety

Steve Baxman is a smart guy, and he talks to people. The storied Russian River fire chief understands why some Sonoma County residents are skeptical about being inoculated with a COVID-19 vaccine.

He’s just not one of those people.

“This is a chance to do something that’s right. I think it’s right,” Baxman said after he lined up in Santa Rosa on Wednesday morning to be among the first local firefighters, paramedics and emergency medical technicians to be vaccinated.

The 68-year-old Monte Rio fire chief said people like him, who are in constant contact with residents and visitors in emergency situations, must act to ensure they don’t contract and spread the virus.

“We’ve got to set the example,” he said. Then he added, “If there’s a chance to avoid a disease that kills, sign me up.”

Baxman first volunteered with the Monte Rio fire protection district 50 years ago and now is the county’s longest serving firefighter. He has spoken with people in and out of the fire service who are inclined not to seize a chance to be inoculated because they fear possible side effects or as a rule don’t trust or believe in vaccines, or are hearing or reading things that worry them.

“I guess I don’t see a downside to it,” Baxman said. As he sees the situation, the spread of coronavirus has to be stopped, and everyone needs to do his or her part to make that happen.

He recounted telling his fire company’s governing board that he’ll gladly become a guinea pig to demonstrate to others that the vaccine is safe.

Baxman was once in the U.S. Air Force and he remembers early on having serious needles poked into both arms at the same time. By comparison, the shot the chief got Wednesday was child’s play.

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FACING UP: Santa Rosa-reared Navy captain Brett Crozier is featured in the “Faces of 2020” section of TIME magazine’s year-end special issue.

The piece recounts in a few paragraphs how Crozier, who as a kid delivered The Press Democrat and engineered the Howarth Park train ride, was relieved of his command of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt in April. Alarmed by the spread of COVID-19 among his crew, Crozier, 50, had in late March sent out unclassified emails urging a more decisive response by the Navy.

The 1988 graduate of Santa Rosa High had himself been infected when the nearly 5,000 members of the Theodore Roosevelt crew cheered him as he left the ship in Guam.

Then something truly extraordinary happened. Thomas Modly, then the acting secretary of the Navy, flew a chartered jet to Guam, boarded the TR, picked up a microphone and, as Time recalled, “delivered a 15-minute profanity-laced tirade” at the crew. Days later, on April 7, Modly resigned under fire.

Capt. Crozier today remains in San Diego, working a shore position. He’s aware that he shares a page in the Time special issue with Joe Exotic, the Tiger King. Things happen.

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THE $4,600 that Betty Ann Sutton carried from a Sebastopol bank in an envelope was intended, most of it, to become Christmas gifts for people dear to her.

Sutton, an artist and proprietor of Mr. Ryder and Company, an antiques shop in Graton, thinks she knows what happened. As she returned to her car from the Exchange Bank branch and was doling to her three eager dogs the biscuits she’d received from the teller, the envelope dropped from her purse.

So much for the money Sutton had planned to tuck into Christmas cards. She figured the dollars would brighten someone else’s holidays.

Deciding it couldn’t hurt to phone the bank and ask if someone had found the money in the parking lot and turned it in, she made the call.

Miracle of miracles. They said, ’Yes, we have it.’“

Sutton had been at the bank at the same time when several day laborers were cashing their paychecks. She’d thanked one of them for holding the door open for her.

It was one of those men, the people at the bank said, who found the fat envelope on the pavement and took it, unopened, to a teller.

“Imagine the honesty, the integrity,” Sutton said. She doesn’t know who the man is, but she thanks him for the Christmas gift she’ll never forget.

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CLO & THE CURRYS: It’s safe to say Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry and his family have a new favorite cow.

The Curry clan and Clo, the mascot of Clover Sonoma, met in Oakland last weekend, hit it off like milk and cookies, and along with a host of partners brightened the holidays for 1,000 underserved families.

The occasion was the 8th annual drive-thru holiday gift, food and resource distribution by Ayesha and Steph Curry’s Eat, Play, Learn Foundation. It happened outside the Oakland Coliseum. For the first time, Clover Sonoma was there.

The Petaluma-based dairy producer brought along Clo, dressed as Santa, and a vintage milk truck udderly decked out for the season. The Clover gang passed out about $8,000 worth of milk and eggnog, and pledged a $20,000 donation to the Currys’ nonprofit.

The happy sounds that rang out everywhere around the Coliseum were holiday moosic to Clo’s ears.

You can contact Chris Smith at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.