By Sean Longoria
The Record Searchlight
COTTONWOOD, Calif. — Five months after Cottonwood fire Capt. Mark Ratledge was killed as he tended to victims of a freeway crash, Jennifer Hobbs finds it hard to discuss the aftermath of her fiance’s death.
On top of the emotional and financial struggles she has endured since Ratledge was killed Feb. 29, Hobbs said she has been the target of isolation and even borderline hostility from Calvin Ciapponi, chief of Cottonwood Fire Protection District and Ratledge’s former boss.
“I have no idea how it got so ugly,” she said.
That ugliness, she said, started the day Ratledge, 35, died. Since then, she has fought with the department on issues including fulfilling its promise to give her his uniform, wondering why the department has been reluctant to memorialize Ratledge and questioning Ciapponi’s involvement in a donation account set up for Ratledge’s family. Two former Cottonwood firefighters have come to her aid, concerned about many of the same matters. Ciapponi declined to comment on the issues raised in this story. Attorney Kristianne Seargeant, from the Sacramento-based law firm Kronick, Mosskovitz, Tiedemann and Girard, also declined to comment, suggesting answers to questions could be found in minutes of the district’s board of directors meetings.
HOBBS’ STRUGGLES
Ratledge was killed after being struck by a pickup on Interstate 5 near Anderson while helping a driver who had slid off the hail-slicked roadway. He initially responded to the wreck alone.
Yet Hobbs, who had lived with Ratledge for nearly three years before his death and is the mother of his toddler daughter, said she didn’t know any of that happened until hours later. Even then, the news was broken to her by a local radio broadcast and a barrage of text messages to her cellphone shortly thereafter.
“I wasn’t notified Mark was dead at all,” she said.
She had to fight with the chief to get Ratledge’s turnout gear: his firefighting jacket and pants. Initially promised the gear as a memento of her lost fiancee, Hobbs went weeks without word on whether it would be turned over to her.
“I had called the department 10 times,” she said.
Eventually she found Ratledge’s name patch, which had been sewn onto the jacket, torn from the gear and placed on his former desk. She eventually got the full gear March 24, when a chief from another fire department, who had heard the promise to Hobbs, brought it to her.
Hobbs said she was told the department issued Ratledge’s gear to another firefighter and the district couldn’t afford the $800 for new gear. Again, no one called Hobbs to tell her about it.
“I think I deserve the respect to know, or at least have a phone call,” she said. She brought those concerns to an April 11 board meeting. There, she asked “why there was a big problem” with getting the gear, according to the minutes of that meeting.
Ciapponi said then the matter required board permission.
At the same meeting Hobbs questioned why the volunteers, who wanted to put a memorial to Ratledge on their T-shirts, weren’t allowed to do so.
“Chief Ciapponi stated he had stopped it as it was a duty shirt and we should treat it as such,” according to the minutes. Board members said they’d have to approve the new wording on the shirts, although the matter hasn’t been raised at any subsequent meeting, “I’ve never heard of anyone not wanting to honor someone who died in the line of duty,” Hobbs said.
Ciapponi also refused to allow decals memorializing Ratledge on department trucks. Of the concerns surrounding Ciapponi’s behavior, Hobbs and a former volunteer firefighter question his involvement in a donation account set up for Ratledge’s family just days after his death.
WORRIES OVER DONATIONS
David Bogue, a former volunteer with the department and close friend of Ratledge, said the account was opened at North Valley Bank by the district secretary.
Yet two days later, Bogue said, Ciapponi, acting as district chief, withdrew nearly $1,000 from the account in the form of two cashier’s checks.
Bogue and Hobbs, who received a phone call the day Ciapponi went to the bank, said the chief “forced his way” onto the account.
Copies of the checks provided by Bogue show some $660 paid to Anderson Florist and Gifts for flowers and another about $296 paid to Safeway for food for Ratledge’s funeral. Bogue questions why Ciapponi would take money from an account opened for the fire captain’s family, especially when people and businesses already had donated overwhelmingly to the service and department.
“Jennifer didn’t approve any of this,” Bogue said.
Hobbs had the account placed exclusively in her name about two months after Ratledge’s death. Some $18,000 was in that account, which she has used to help pay bills and support her three children without Ratledge’s income.
“The outpour has been amazing,” Hobbs said.
But she has yet to receive word on Ratledge’s death benefits, she said, which would help support her and the children once the donation account funds dry up.
The board of directors addressed the concern with Ciapponi and the account at its June 11 meeting. Ciapponi said then the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation asked for help paying for Ratledge’s funeral and memorial.
“The Mark Ratledge Memorial Fund was set up to help offset the costs of funeral expenses and help Ms. Hobbs and daughter Sophia. The funds taken out of the account the board felt were in line with this criteria and no misappropriation of fund had taken place,” according to the minutes from that meeting.
OTHERS COME FORWARD
Bogue, who describes Ratledge as one of his closest friends, has his own reasons to be dissatisfied with the department.
A volunteer since July 2011, Bogue was fired by Ciapponi in late April as he was dealing with grief from his friend’s death. The reason given, according to an April 26 letter from Ciapponi, was a “lack of participation” and communication.
Bogue freely admitted he hadn’t responded to many calls since Ratledge’s death, although he had sought counseling to deal with the grief of losing his friend and didn’t want to deal with an “unhealthy environment” at the station.
He also sent at least three letters to Ciapponi in April and early May, questioning his firing and disputing the chief’s claim of a lack of communication.
In response, Bogue received another letter from Ciapponi, threatening to call the sheriff’s office if Bogue didn’t return his firefighting equipment.
Yet Bogue himself called deputies May 29 to report a threat he said came from Ciapponi through his girlfriend, according to sheriff’s dispatch logs from that day.
Days earlier at a barbecue, Ciapponi approached Bogue’s girlfriend, claiming to “know a lot of people” and warned her Bogue should “watch his back,” Bogue said.
Former Cottonwood volunteer Traci Clay also had her own clash with Ciapponi during her time with the district about four years ago. She eventually left the district to volunteer with the Shasta County Fire Department, she said.
“It’s a very cliquey situation down there,” Clay said. “If you’re not in their clique, you’re not wanted.” Clay was trained by Ratledge and didn’t know Hobbs until after Ratledge died. She since has offered some of her firefighting gear to Hobbs’ daughter, 17-year-old Hannah Jasperse, who also is training to be a firefighter.
MOVING FORWARD
Along with Hannah and her other children, 10-year-old Connor and 18-month old Sophia, Hobbs continues to face tough times following her fiance’s death.
Although the family just returned from Spain, a trip sponsored by the Remembrance Rescue Project, to meet Ratledge’s extended family there, she still is wondering when she will hear about death benefits.
And she still is isolated from many of Ratledge’s former colleagues.
“The chief will not call me,” Hobbs said.
“I just wish more people would stick up for themselves,” she said. “I do think Mark should be honored and not forgotten. ... To me, I think that Mark’s death could be used to better train people. Maybe that would trigger conversations about how to be safer.”
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