Oregon Public Broadcasting

Authorities are looking for suspects in a major marijuana bust that eradicated more than 10,000 plants being grown on national forest land.

Thursday's raid of the marijuana garden is one of the bigger busts in recent memory, and one of the agents on the case was Forest Service cop Hadley Hawkins.

Hawkins was just named the Forest Service office of the year for his work on 1 million acres of the Bend-Fort Rock Ranger District. Central Oregon correspondent Ethan Lindsey rode along with Hawkins, on a patrol of the Deschutes National Forest south of Bend.

"Ok, hello. I'm Hadley Hawkins, a law enforcement officer with the U.S. Forest Service.

"I'm 38-years-old, married, a couple boys, a 16-year-old and a 7-month old. A little spread out. And I've been here in Bend Oregon since 2001, actually it's easy to remember - my first week here was 9/11.

"I'm just out patrolling, out in the forest, like a city police officer patrols in the city.

"Any crime, anything going on out in the forest. In addition to search and rescue, the whole gamut. At any second we could get a call and go anywhere in the Ochoco or Deschutes National Forest right now.

"I enjoy it, it kinda drives family crazy sometimes.

"We're now in the forest, and in this first part of the forest there are some areas closed to vehicles. So, I am looking for any violation that way, or squatters. As the population increases in Bend, we get a lot of people who live in the woods and a lot don't realize that its against the law to live out here.

"And we have a lot of them who are hiding from the law, as well.

"I can think of one instance, in fact on this road, just a normal traffic stop, guy was extremely nervous, which can be common, anytime you get stopped by police. But he was a little more nervous than normal. And so another officer came out to help me because I just kinda had a bad feeling. We found some methamphetamine, and so we put him into custody. But we couldn't figure out who he was because he kept giving us a false name. But on the search, we found his prison blues in his trunk. In the pocket of one of his prison outfits was a bus ticket with his real name and that's how we figured out he was obviously wanted on multiple charges. Plus escape. Not the smartest thing to do, if you are escaped from prison is to keep your prison blues with you.

"One of my fellow officers called me the other day and said something about the officer of the year and I laughed. We play tricks on each other, and I just took it as another trick and he said, no, you are.

"My local captain nominated me and I was shocked, because I didn't even know I was nominated.

"I guarantee you there are a lot more deserving officers, I just happen to have a good supervisor, a good captain who took the time. Some of the things he said was my involvement in the drug investigations. I enjoy going in on these marijuana gardens, so I'm involved in not just participation in these missions but I do some training of fellow officers.

"We're going to pull in here, this is a little closed area, but its very popular for illegal dumping. You got some illegal brush here, and some debris from some yard clean up there. And there's a washer and dryer. You get a lot of household garbage. We'll try to find out who dumped it, if we can. But it is frustrating. Because of the amount of garbage that's dumped.

"My wife laughs. I don't like to camp on the Deschutes, because to me, this is my office, and so I can't let my guard down. And I'm always looking, and she always tells me that I'm not working. But to me, I always am, if I'm out here. So it is hard, I do have a different perception than you do, when I am out here."