PORT ANGELES — The crew of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Active returned home to a hero’s welcome Sunday afternoon after a three-month deployment off the coast of Central America.
Dozens of happy families were waiting on the Coast Guard Air Station/Sector Field Office Port Angeles pier as the 210-foot cutter was quickly tied up, and families and friends then reunited on the pier and on the cutter.
“It doesn’t seem real. We’re excited to see him,” said Birte Bojarzin of Port Angeles, who was at the pier with her daughter Mina Bojarzin, 8, to greet husband and father Chief Holger Bojarzin.
Mina Bojarzin waited with a hand-lettered sign of rainbow letters that read “Welcome back Daddy. We missed you.”
She then leapt into her father’s arms for a bear hug when he stepped off the Active.
Family members joined the crew on the Active before personnel were released from duty to go home with their families.
The Coast Guard announced Saturday that the cutter had a successful deployment since its departure in January.
The crew of the cutter seized more than $17 million worth of illegal narcotics during their deployment in support of Joint Interagency Task Force South, according to the Coast Guard.
During the deployment, Active’s crew responded to search-and-rescue calls, detained a number of suspicious vessels and suspects, and seized more than 1,177 pounds of cocaine from suspected smugglers.
“This was a typical multi-mission patrol for us. The crew saved lives, successfully interdicted illegal narcotics likely bound for the United States, disrupted transnational organized crime networks and last week, capped off the deployment with a successful recertification of our shipboard helicopter operations capability,” said Cmdr. Phillip Crigler, commanding officer of the Active.
“The crew worked extremely hard for three months. After conducting helicopter and boat evolutions day and night, we are all ready to be back home,” Crigler said.
In addition to interdiction and emergency response duties, members also spent time on shore at an elementary school in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where they performed maintenance and renovations on the school building and visited with a few of the students.
According to the Coast Guard, Active’s crew routinely operates from Central America to the coast of Washington conducting search and rescue, counter-narcotics, fisheries and other Coast Guard missions.
U.S. maritime law enforcement and the interdiction phase of counter-smuggling operations in the Eastern Pacific is performed under the tactical control of the 11th Coast Guard District in Alameda, Calif.
The district encompasses the states of California, Arizona, Nevada and Utah; the coastal and offshore waters up to 1,000 miles from the U.S. Coast; and the waters offshore from Mexico and Central and South America.
The Joint Interagency Task Force South, a National Task Force under U.S. Southern Command, oversees the detection and monitoring of illicit traffickers and assists U.S. and multinational law enforcement agencies with the interdiction of these illicit traffickers.
At-sea drug seizures and arrests in international waters are led and conducted by U.S. Coast Guard personnel or in partnership with other national law enforcement agencies.
The Active was commissioned Sept. 1, 1966, and carries a crew of about 70 enlisted members and 12 officers.
________
Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arice@peninsuladailynews.com.
