The about-to-be Most Dangerous Driver title holder, while technically fitting the profile of a credible contender, was notable in several ways. First, at 2:15 in the afternoon, he hadn’t yet had time to bring his blood alcohol titers up to the level where one would ideally like to see them. He was legally impaired, of course, but such a low standard as that has never figured into the scoring. To his credit, he was on his way to meet some buddies at a sports bar in Beaverton in order to improve his score, but good intentions don’t count. Second, he had barely nudged the needle in the second scoring category, abstraction from present circumstance. This would change momentarily, but for now he was more or less as connected to cause and effect as the drivers around him. Finally, he had not caused the massive wreck that had shut down traffic in all directions.

The current title holder, who had caused the wreck, was standing by his car, which had spun off to the periphery of the scene. Two Multnomah County Sheriff’s deputies were administering a field sobriety test. The scene was one of concentric circles. The outermost circle was a small armada of cops and cop cars with their blue lights flashing, trying to herd the traffic that was coming up on all sides at the big intersection. The inner circle was made of firefighters and fire trucks and paramedic units with their red lights flashing.

At the center was a smallish two-door sedan, largely intact from the center post back and largely a mess from the center post forward. Both doors were mangled permanently shut. The hood had accordioned up almost to the wind shield which had, via some underappreciated law of physics, not even suffered a crack. A young woman was behind the wheel. The dashboard was essentially in her lap, the steering wheel was up directly against her chest, causing her to sit bolt upright in excellent posture. The wind shield was perhaps an inch and a half from her face.

It hadn’t taken the firefighters long to determine that the only way to extract the woman would be by cutting off the roof of the car and lifting it away. They brought out a gigantic hydraulic tool and began to cut through the door posts. At that moment there was a sharp explosive crashing noise, loud enough to cut through the intense noise of the rescue and make everyone flinch. The sound was that of the about-to-be Most Dangerous Driver beginning his run at the title.

The mere fact that he had become fascinated and distracted by all the flashing lights and drama and had rear-ended one car and side swiped a second was not in itself enough to increase his scoring in either category by very much. After all, half the drivers in the area were just as distracted and a few of them just as drunk. It’s just that they had already stopped and were waiting for the cops to shepherd all the traffic backup by turns into the single lane left free of emergency vehicles and out the other side of the intersection. The act that increased his scoring in the second category to championship levels happened over a period of no more than three seconds.

First, the simultaneous catastrophic deceleration and ear-splitting crash caused a slew of chemicals to dump into his brain. This had the effect of focusing his attention. His head whipped around and took in a landscape full of uniformed police in all directions whose heads were themselves whipping around in his direction. Then like those single isolated clouds that can suddenly take shape in an empty sky, there appeared fully formed in his brain the unalterable and deeply held conviction that driving away as quickly as possible would be the best way of handling the situation. Having thus elevated his second category score to championship levels, the only thing that stood between him and the title was his ability to put someone else’s life at risk. Which he then did.

Cookie Crenshaw was parked driver’s door to driver’s door talking with a Sheriff’s deputy and effectively avoiding law enforcement when the sound of the crash brought all heads up. She saw that peculiar small cloud of dust that erupts and hangs for a moment in the air from even a fender bender, then saw the blue and white 70-something Trans Am that had done the bending. She instinctively went into vacation defense mode but quickly realized that the Trans Am was only a few yards away from several cops and that there was going to be nothing required of her. An older, more experienced cop would not have been nearly as surprised as Cookie was when she saw the Trans Am lurch backwards a few yards then peel off around the line of cars ahead of it, scattering cops and taking a great deal of blue paint off the door of a PPD cruiser, then accelerate across the intersection and head east.

Cookie’s mouth fell open in disbelief, her eyes got very wide and she looked over at the deputy. It was like looking into a mirror. He had the same expression. And when her mouth curled up and turned into a wide, joyous grin she saw his face do the same. She started her engine. “Try to keep up, won’t you?” she called out to the deputy as she floored the accelerator, laughing out loud.

The eventual arrest was made at gun point – a half dozen gun points to be exact, given the me-too vehicles that had got involved. Cookie, thinking again of the Great Barrier Reef, stepped aside to avoid being part of the actual arrest, leaving others to get the credit and handle all the paperwork.

There are good odds that each of those guns was being unholstered and pointed for real at a human target rather than a paper one, for the first time. Odds are just as good that by the time those careers had run out, the first time would turn out to be the only time. Except for Cookie, who a week later and against all odds would be pointing her weapon at someone again.

The god of the news cycle relegated that event to a few paragraphs in the Metro section of the Oregonian.

A Portland man is in custody following a brief but intense exchange of gunfire with Portland Police Bureau officers Tuesday morning. Matthew Charles Blaylock, 49, was charged with armed burglary and attempted murder. He is being held without bail pending a hearing Wednesday.

Police were called to a residence on SW Tunnelwood Dr. by neighbors who reported suspicious activity in a home where the owners were away on vacation.

The suspect was surprised inside the residence, where the gunfire occurred. According to a PPB spokesperson there were no injuries from the gun shots though the suspect did receive minor injuries while resisting arrest. The arresting officers were not immediately available for comment.

The entire incident was reported in the voluminous officer-involved-shooting paperwork that’s required when service weapons are discharged. There are two additional facts not in that report that bore no immediate relevance to the incident but do help to explain how the incident unfolded the way it did.

The first is that on those infrequent occasions when Cookie wore a dress uniform while she was a Marine, one of her decorations was a Pistol Expert badge, one grade higher than sharpshooter. The second is that Cookie’s personal side arm was a nickel plated Ruger .357 magnum revolver, which other than a stuffed rabbit that she’d had since girlhood was the only sentimental possession she had brought with her when she moved from east Texas to be a cop in Portland.

The call came in as a suspicious activity report by the neighbors of a couple who were out of town. Cookie and an officer named Wilson arrived at nearly the same time. Wilson went to talk with the neighbors while Cookie walked the perimeter of the house.

When she found the back door unlocked her heart rate went from idle to pegged out. She ought to have stepped back and got the second officer. Instead she stepped through the door and into the kitchen just as a very nervous man who had seen the patrol cars arriving was walking into the kitchen, on his way out, having already abandoned jewelry and electronics in the living room.

If you want to find eternity in even less than an hour, a very effective shortcut is to have that entire hour play out in the space of a single second. During that very long second Cookie and the intruder looked at each other across the kitchen. Then there was a gun in his hand and a muzzle flash, then Cookie’s .38 Special was in her hand and she was firing at center mass as she saw another muzzle flash and another. When it was over Cookie was deaf from the explosions and choking and half blind from the pall of cordite that filled the kitchen, but she was experiencing that odd calm that sometimes comes over the adrenaline-deluged when they are supremely focused.

It did not occur to her at that moment to notice whether she’d been hit or to simply be glad to be alive, because through the thick smoke, there was the man, still standing, looking at the now empty gun in his hand, and Cookie realized that not one of her shots had hit this large target not twenty feet away from her. And in a second that barely seemed long enough to be a full second, she went from focused calm to blind rage. She screamed in a way that she had never screamed in her life, flew across the kitchen and landed a devastating right cross to the side of the man’s head. He was unconscious before his knees had a chance to buckle.

Officer Wilson had finished talking to the neighbors who had called and was walking toward the house, unhappy that he couldn’t spot Cookie, when he heard a long series of gun shots and then a woman’s blood curdling scream. He ran toward the house, pistol in one hand, shouting into the radio in his other hand, “Shots fired! Shots fired! Officer down!” when he came to the open back door with clouds of smoke drifting lazily out. Inside, he saw a body lying face down on the floor and Cookie Crenshaw kneeling over it, dragging the arms back and placing handcuffs on the motionless wrists. He made sure there was no one else in the house then came back and asked “Where’s he hit?”

“In the head,” Cookie replied.

“Shit! Have you checked his pulse?”

Cookie, tightening the hand cuffs, looked up at him with a puzzled expression. “Why would I do that?”

At which point Mr. Matthew Charles Blaylock, age 49, began to stir. “Fuck! My nose is broken!”

“No, it’s not. It’s not even bleeding” said Cookie. Then she rubbed the knuckles of her right hand, winced in pain and said to Wilson, “Damn! that hurts.”

Of such stuff are precinct legends made and trophies given.