Caitlyn Clay at SAMO

A view of the mountains at Circle X Ranch   Oh. My God. I definitely got way more than I bargained for this week while working VRP and patrolling with Ranger Cooper. When she told me that SAMO mostly gets low level misdemeanors, I thought we were going to spend our time telling some lady to put her dog on a leash or redirecting equestrians to horse-friendly trails. I want to clarify that I definitely did not expect an action movie, I also didn't expect this week's event to happen either.   Tuesday was probably the most calm day out of the week. Ranger Cooper spent most of the day answering my questions as we patrolled a few areas of the park. I asked her about the park's legal relationship with the state of California, and she told me that she can enforce both federal and state laws within the jurisdiction SAMO, and that the park does not have it's own detention center so, depending on where a suspect was arrested, a Ranger would either book them in to Ventura County or...

 My first day of work was Wednesday, 5/24, I was given Monday and Tuesday off to recover from the jet lag and then on Wednesday it was right to work. I began my day at 8:00 AM where Ranger Jessica Cooper picked me up to show me to headquarters. At headquarters I was introduced to Generalist Ranger Lorena Sanchez, who would be giving me my orientation. Ranger Sanchez took me all around the Santa Monica Mountains and gave me a brief tour. First, we stopped at the visitor center at King Gillette Ranch, a property that was once owned by King C. Gillette, the inventor of the disposable razor. After a brief visit to Paramount Ranch which was previously owned by Paramount Studios and has been the site of several films, we arrived at Solstice Canyon. Ranger Sanchez drove us a bit further down one of the driveways to the ruins of the Robert’s house. The house was built in 1952 and is located next to the waterfall, however, it burned down in a wildfire in recent years. After that we were on ...