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Episode: Emelia's Thing

Author: NHPR
Duration: 00:51:17

Episode Shownotes

A young police officer unexpectedly finds herself back in New Hampshire, and she’s not the same person she was when she left. Something happened to her – to all of us. But for Officer Emelia Campbell, this thing still lives in her brain and her body. This is her story

of survival. SUPPORT THE WORK OF THE TEAM BEHIND BEAR BROOK BY MAKING A DONATION HERE!

Summary

In this episode of Bear Brook, Officer Emelia Campbell shares her journey of survival following her traumatic experiences during the January 6 Capitol riot. She reflects on her transition from a police officer in D.C. to her rural role in New Hampshire, grappling with unresolved trauma and the scars it has left on her life. Amidst the struggle for emotional healing, she highlights the importance of community, the impact of guilt related to her colleagues, and her commitment to support programs for first responders. Emelia's story underscores the complexities of justice, memory, and identity in shadowed by her quest for truth.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Emelia's Thing) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_00
Hey, it's Jason Moon. I've got a news story for you. This one told in a single episode. I worked on it with my partner on the document team, Lauren Chooljian.

00:00:11 Speaker_00
You know Lauren from our series, The Thirteenth Step, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Well, a few months ago, Lauren stumbled onto a really special, really timely story. And really, I don't want to give anything away.

00:00:26 Speaker_00
So that's all I'm going to tell you. So here it is from the document team at New Hampshire Public Radio, Amelia's Thing.

00:00:36 Speaker_04
These are my moo cow friends. I say hi to them every day. I know, they look cute. And there's like two horses over here.

00:00:44 Speaker_01
I'm sitting in the front seat of Officer Amelia Campbell's police cruiser. We're on a tour of her typical patrol route in Northumberland, New Hampshire. She showed me her preferred speed trap spots, the scene of a hit-and-run from last week.

00:00:58 Speaker_01
But this, a farm, this is the hot spot. Suddenly, two horses jump up on their hind legs and start kind of swatting at each other. Break it up, guys.

00:01:09 Speaker_04
Don't make me come over there.

00:01:12 Speaker_01
Life as a cop in a rural town can be slow. Amelia's got a good sense of humor about it. But this job can also drive her a little nuts. She says 90% of the calls they get in Northumberland are what Amelia describes as non-police matters.

00:01:28 Speaker_01
Case in point, a call comes in. It's a message from police dispatch. Amelia looks down at a computer screen that sits between us and starts reading.

00:01:37 Speaker_04
Yeah, so something like, we have no water and we're on the town water system.

00:01:42 Speaker_01
Basically, someone's water isn't working. So they called the police to fix it? So here's 28-year-old Officer Campbell, dressed in your typical police uniform, bulletproof vest, gun in a holster, and her brown hair pulled back into a bun.

00:01:57 Speaker_01
She puts her hands up like she's exasperated and mouths, what do you want me to do about that? What do you want me to do about that?

00:02:04 Speaker_04
I can't just wave a magic wand and be like, let there be water. I was like, you might want to call the water department.

00:02:14 Speaker_01
Now, before you start thinking that Amelia is just going to shrug this woman off, she picks up her phone. Are you going to call this person?

00:02:23 Speaker_04
Yeah, and then I'll probably call the water department just to see.

00:02:27 Speaker_02
Well, that's nice of you, Amelia.

00:02:29 Speaker_04
I know. I try. Don't tell anyone I'm a nice person. I won't.

00:02:33 Speaker_01
I will, actually.

00:02:35 Speaker_04
Hi, this is Officer Campbell with Northumberland PD.

00:02:38 Speaker_01
Amelia Campbell is a very nice person. She can be crass, but also very sweet. She may grumble, she will definitely joke, but she is truly devoted to protecting and serving the people of Northumberland and Groveden, New Hampshire.

00:02:52 Speaker_01
So consider the case of why isn't this woman's water on officially open.

00:02:58 Speaker_04
Yeah, some days are better than others. I mean, there's times I just deal with these calls every day, and I'm just like, why am I still in this? Because it's really not what I want to be doing. I want to save lives, and I want to protect people.

00:03:16 Speaker_04
There's days up here where I'm just like, I ain't doing that. I feel like I'm keeping two neighbors from just letting them yell at each other for 30 minutes.

00:03:28 Speaker_01
So why are you here?

00:03:30 Speaker_04
Pays my bills. I like my chief. And I still have a lot that I need to work on emotionally.

00:03:39 Speaker_01
a lot she needs to work on emotionally. This question I'm asking Amelia is kind of a loaded one. Amelia is here because of January 6th. Amelia was a Capitol Police officer. Nearly four years later, January 6th still lives in her brain and in her body.

00:03:58 Speaker_01
Amelia's all the way up here with the horses and cows in Northumberland because she's trying to heal.

00:04:05 Speaker_04
civil dispute calls, you know, just people not getting along with each other, neighbors not getting along with each other.

00:04:11 Speaker_04
And just that confrontation of them fighting and yelling at each other that just brings the flashbacks of this guy yelling at me. We want those fucking traitors.

00:04:26 Speaker_04
And that just kind of those emotions and that confrontation of people and, you know, those heated arguments are what kind of bring back those images for me.

00:04:43 Speaker_01
The next presidential election is just days away and the results will be certified again on January 6th, 2025. Who knows what might happen this time? This country can't even agree on what happened last time.

00:04:57 Speaker_01
Was it a day of love, as former President Donald Trump calls it, or was it an attack on our democracy? I found a poll from earlier this year that said 43% of the people surveyed feel that too much is being made of January 6th.

00:05:12 Speaker_01
It's time to move on from it, they said. Move on? What a luxury that would be for people like Amelia Campbell. People died that day. Many, many more were injured. And there's a silent impact of this day that we'll never get an accounting for.

00:05:30 Speaker_01
At least five police officers who responded to the attack on the Capitol died by suicide. It's impossible to know how many people on the Hill that day now navigate life with PTSD like Amelia does. Amelia has never spoken publicly about January 6th.

00:05:49 Speaker_01
But lately, she's changed her mind. She's decided she wants you to know what happened. How it's not a political thing for her, it's a scar. Something that lives inside her every single day. And despite it all, she survived.

00:06:16 Speaker_01
To really understand Amelia's experience of January 6th and life afterward, you have to know that up until the moment that riot began, this girl was fully thriving.

00:06:27 Speaker_04
It was ironically, I think, for everyone else that was miserable in 2020, it was my favorite year.

00:06:35 Speaker_01
Her favorite year, 2020. Not many people, she realizes, would say that. But even amidst a pandemic, Amelia was living her dream life. She grew up mostly in Loudon, New Hampshire, a place she was dying to move away from.

00:06:51 Speaker_04
All we had was cow tipping at NASCAR in Loudon, and I didn't really partake in either of them, so it was a lot.

00:06:59 Speaker_01
In high school, Amelia set two big goals for herself. I want to live in Washington, D.C., and I want to work in law enforcement. By 2020, Amelia, at 24 years old, she had checked both those boxes.

00:07:12 Speaker_01
She was a Capitol Police officer, her first job out of college. She had recently moved in with her boyfriend Rob, also a Capitol Police officer, and she was happy. Settled. Amelia's assignment was the First Responders Unit, or FRU.

00:07:27 Speaker_01
It was her job to protect the outside of the Capitol building. This seems like a good time for me to tell you Amelia hates politics. She has absolutely no interest in it. Never has. Some of her colleagues loved the access to congressmen and women.

00:07:42 Speaker_01
Others, she says, took the job because they wanted to protect democracy. But Amelia is motivated by rules, the literal enforcement of laws. Why is it important to protect the Capitol?

00:07:55 Speaker_04
It was my job. I mean, there's people in there that have lives and have families just like you and me, and it was my job to protect them and make sure that they go home and can do their job at the end of the day.

00:08:09 Speaker_04
It's none of our place to say what they're doing is wrong or right. I have no idea what they're voting on 99% of the time, so I'll have at it to them.

00:08:20 Speaker_01
She feels the same about protesters. Have at it to them. And in 2020, there were a lot of protests for Amelia and her colleagues to manage. There were the weekly fire drill Fridays led by Jane Fonda and other climate activists. Those were easy.

00:08:35 Speaker_01
Amelia says the activists would file a permit and even gave Capitol Police a heads up about when they planned to block traffic or how many people would get arrested. And of course, there were the George Floyd protests.

00:08:48 Speaker_01
Those days, Amelia remembers as more heated. She was spit on. People cursed and screamed in her face. It sure wasn't fun, she says, but it was her job.

00:08:58 Speaker_04
I get it, you know, like people were angry and people need to voice their opinions and they want to be heard. And that's what our, that's what our country and our democracy is all about.

00:09:08 Speaker_04
You know, that freedom of speech, of being heard and being listened to.

00:09:13 Speaker_02
So up until it sounds like, correct me if I'm wrong here, it sounds like up until January 6th, you really hadn't had some sort of like traumatic or even like your feelings hadn't even been hurt at work. Yeah.

00:09:27 Speaker_04
Yeah.

00:09:28 Speaker_02
Wow. Do you want to talk about that day now? Yeah, we can. Okay. And if you want to stop, we are cool to stop. Yeah.

00:09:37 Speaker_04
We knew, I mean, obviously Biden had won the presidency and then Trump was, I don't listen to the, I don't watch the news, but I knew obviously he wasn't happy with the results and it was brewing. So my original shift was 3 p.m.

00:09:56 Speaker_04
to 11 p.m., that's when I worked. I had come in early that day.

00:10:03 Speaker_01
So ironic. Amelia didn't usually come in early, but she had a little arrangement going with a colleague she liked named Officer Brian Sicknick.

00:10:12 Speaker_01
Brian didn't always like working overtime or holidays, but Amelia liked the extra money, so she'd cover for him. On January 6th, Brian was scheduled to come in four hours early at 11 a.m.

00:10:26 Speaker_01
But Amelia offered to take it, letting Brian start his day later on. What's an extra four hours?

00:10:32 Speaker_04
My first two hours were on the east side and the crowd was growing and we were like, this is a pretty big crowd, you know, but they were being normal for for what it was.

00:10:47 Speaker_04
We kind of like protests because it gives you a time that it's pulling officers from everywhere so people that you don't normally see every day you can be like hey how you doing you know and like check in on one another so it was it was very just happy-go-lucky for us it was it really even up until the point it was very normal.

00:11:05 Speaker_01
A few hours into her shift, things were still just happy-go-lucky. Amelia pops inside the Capitol, heads downstairs to the House cafeteria to grab a sandwich.

00:11:15 Speaker_01
She checks the time, realizes she's due outside, so she heads back up to the West Front of the Capitol.

00:11:21 Speaker_04
And so I go up and we see, we like look out on Pennsylvania Avenue, and we see the group coming. And I was like, holy shit, that's a lot of people.

00:11:41 Speaker_01
The Capitol was blocked off even more than usual because the stage was being built for soon to be President Joe Biden's inauguration.

00:11:48 Speaker_04
We had the bike racks up and it was barricaded like it normally was for a thing. And then I don't know if something came over the radio and it just flipped.

00:12:05 Speaker_06
And as soon as they hit,

00:12:19 Speaker_04
the grass on the west front of the Capitol, they just started running. And I've never seen anything like it. And just full-fledged running towards us. Like one minute the west front was empty and now it's completely covered in people.

00:12:38 Speaker_04
There's always people that kind of like push the bike racks and we push them back and we say, no, you know, don't cross the bike rack. You know, like we were doing our thing.

00:12:46 Speaker_04
And for me, it was this guy just went and there was a ladder that was right by the scaffolding. And he like went to take the ladder. And I was like, what the fuck are you doing?

00:13:00 Speaker_04
And I grabbed the ladder and then the other officer came and, you know, we took control of the ladder and I kind of like flung it up the stairs. And I was like, what the fuck? And then it was just, and then all of a sudden it was just chaos.

00:13:17 Speaker_04
— There was, like, absolute chaos, and it was— there was officers everywhere, and then, you know, officers were spraying O.C. spray at them, and it was just getting in the air, and then they were spraying shit back, and it was in the air.

00:13:29 Speaker_01
— O.C. spray is pepper spray. Officers were trying to use it to hold their line, but rioters were spraying stuff back at them. And Amelia says she and her colleagues were not prepared to manage it.

00:13:42 Speaker_04
So, like, at one point, I got sprayed with, like, OC spray or something, and we had nothing set up. So I was looking around, I was like, who has a water bottle? You know, I have to get this out of my eyes.

00:13:54 Speaker_01
Amelia finds some random Yeti water bottle on the ground and starts flushing out her eyes with it.

00:13:58 Speaker_04
It just burns. And you can't— your influx is to close your eyes, which really you can't do because then you're really getting it— you have to air it out, you have to get it out of your eyes.

00:14:10 Speaker_04
So like, you know, crying and blinking and your nose is running.

00:14:13 Speaker_01
— Once she's able to see clearly, Amelia happens to glance down at her smartwatch, and she sees tons of notifications from her family group text.

00:14:22 Speaker_04
— My aunt, at one point, was like, are you watching this? And then my sister was like, is she okay?

00:14:30 Speaker_04
I remember being on the stairs, I was helping with the OC spray on somebody and I had just doused her eyes and I looked up and I just, I kind of had that free moment. And I knew I was like, this is gonna be the only time to say something.

00:14:46 Speaker_04
And I found my mom's name and I texted her, I'm okay.

00:14:54 Speaker_02
Was that true?

00:14:54 Speaker_04
No, no. I mean, I had just been O.C. sprayed and I, you know, they were I thought I was going to die. I did not think at the beginning of of it all, I did not think I was going to live through that day. I just knew it calmed them down.

00:15:19 Speaker_01
Once she sends that text to her mom, Amelia snaps back to attention. She starts thinking, quickly. She's not wearing any riot gear. She's just in her normal uniform. No shield or helmet or ballistic vest.

00:15:32 Speaker_04
So at one point, I was like, well, what can I do where I'm going to keep myself safe? I eventually pivoted. I don't know at what moment, but I was like, I will get injured officers.

00:15:43 Speaker_01
She spotted a Capitol Police officer lying on the ground, clearly hurt. So she runs into the crowd, put her arms around his shoulders and dragged him inside the Capitol.

00:15:53 Speaker_01
She remembers there's an office inside with a first aid station, a place that would be safe.

00:15:58 Speaker_04
So I pulled that first guy. I went back. There was an officer who was like three months pregnant, pulled her off the line. You know, I was like, you need to go check it. You know, take care of your baby. You need to get checked out.

00:16:12 Speaker_04
And then I was going back out like a, oh, I don't even want to put a number. I don't even know how many times I went in and out. But anyways, one of my coworkers got pulled into the crowd. And so we went after him and whatnot and pulled him back.

00:16:27 Speaker_04
And his eye was cut open, like just completely bleeding. What was it like to see that? It was rough. I brought him inside and I had my arm wrapped around him because he was like, you know, delirious and whatnot.

00:16:42 Speaker_04
Around that time, I said, we need to get an ambulance here. And we got the first calls that they had broken through the barricade on the east side of the Capitol.

00:16:57 Speaker_01
Everyone and everything had to be moved immediately. Amelia had no idea how many rioters had broken through or even where they were. She just had to get these injured officers to safety.

00:17:08 Speaker_04
We had to pack up everything and we had, you know, officers that were like, you know, with broken ankles. woman with a baby in her belly. And, you know, we had to pick all that up.

00:17:20 Speaker_01
As they start moving through the corridors of the Capitol, Amelia says she starts to lose track of time.

00:17:26 Speaker_04
I lost track of everything. I mean, I couldn't have even told you what side of — I didn't know if we were on the Senate side, if we were on the House side. I didn't even know if we were still at the Capitol. Like, I had no idea.

00:17:38 Speaker_01
They end up in a room somewhere that's deemed safe. Someone locks the door. Amelia is stuck inside with all the injured officers. Hours go by.

00:17:53 Speaker_04
My partner, I called him my partner. I have no idea. I mean, I know his name is Michael. He worked for Metropolitan PD. So I had never met him up until this day, but he was the one with the eye injury. He was like, Campbell, we have to go back out there.

00:18:05 Speaker_04
We have to go back out there. And I was like, we can't, I was like, we can't do anything. By seven, eight o'clock at night, we got the, the radio that had been cleared and that the building was deemed safe.

00:18:26 Speaker_04
Then it was, there was, we had a sergeant come in and he was talking and it was all like, it was just so hazy.

00:18:36 Speaker_04
But I remember him talking to people and writing down names and I realize now, looking back, that he needed to figure out who was injured, who needed an ambulance, all that kind of stuff. He came over to me And he said, how are you feeling?

00:18:52 Speaker_04
And I was like, I'm, I'm worried about him.

00:18:56 Speaker_01
Him meaning Michael, the officer with the eye injury. He finally got into an ambulance.

00:19:02 Speaker_04
And so once he left, that was my moment that I could, I was like, okay, I was like, my partner's getting the help that he needs. The, you know, people, the protesters are out of the building.

00:19:13 Speaker_04
And then like all of a sudden, it's pretty amazing how your body works. My hand started burn. I've never felt a worse burn in my entire life. And I looked down and it was like red and like there was a bubble, like my skin had like bubbled up.

00:19:31 Speaker_04
So I went over to the sink and like poured, you know, put the cold water on and I was just running my hand through it. And somebody came over to me and was like, oh, just made like an audible like, And they're like, what happened?

00:19:44 Speaker_04
I was like, I don't know. I was like, I have no idea. I was like, I didn't even notice until 20 seconds ago.

00:19:51 Speaker_01
She'd been so focused on helping, surviving, she didn't even realize she'd been hurt. Eventually, Amelia and a few other officers are taken out of the Capitol and into an ambulance. She spends hours at the hospital with many of her colleagues.

00:20:07 Speaker_01
She's treated, and eventually someone comes and starts taking them back to the Capitol.

00:20:13 Speaker_04
And I'll just never forget, it was about five, six o'clock the next morning. We got the ride back from the hospital to the Capitol building. And we were walking through the Capitol and just the destruction.

00:20:28 Speaker_04
And it was cloudy inside from the smoke and the spray. And we were just walking down the hall and we were seeing broken glass and debris and somebody's shoe that they lost. And you could just sense the emotion in the air.

00:20:49 Speaker_04
And you can sense that we had all just gone through something that none of us really knew what had just happened. And yeah, it was... You could see it in your head. Yeah. It was crazy.

00:21:10 Speaker_01
Amelia starts tearing up. She relives this day in her head all the time, but it usually stays in there. She hardly ever talks about it, especially this next part. As she walks through the haze, she spots a group of officers.

00:21:27 Speaker_04
They were like sitting on the bench outside of our, you know, just kind of slumped over to feet. We were just all defeated mentally, physically, emotionally. And I heard about, I heard about Brian Sicknick.

00:21:41 Speaker_01
Brian Sicknick, the Capitol Police officer who Amelia always covered for, who she covered for on January 6th. Brian had collapsed at the Capitol. Another officer tried to give CPR, but it wasn't looking good.

00:21:55 Speaker_01
Brian was taken to the hospital and was currently on life support. Amelia was exhausted, defeated, badly burned, and now incredibly worried. It was mid-morning now on January 7th. January 6th was over. Except it had only just begun.

00:22:28 Speaker_03
you

00:22:45 Speaker_01
United States Capitol Police Officer Amelia Campbell is gutted. She sits down on her couch in the apartment she shares with her boyfriend Rob, also a Capitol Police officer. It's about 10 a.m. on January 7th.

00:22:59 Speaker_01
She's finally home, 24 hours after she started her shift on January 6th. Amelia is glued to a group text she has going with other officers. She is desperate to hear what's going on with Brian Sicknick.

00:23:13 Speaker_01
The colleague Amelia always covers for, who is in critical condition. It's hard for her to text back, though. Her hand is wrapped up tightly. Doctors don't know what she was sprayed with, some kind of homemade chemical.

00:23:25 Speaker_01
It burned through her skin and damaged her nerve endings. The doctors at the hospital told her she's got to stay home, no work, for a few days. Amelia is not having it.

00:23:36 Speaker_04
I absolutely hated it. And I kept texting my inspector and whatnot. I was like, I don't want to be here. I need to be there with you guys. There's so much happening and so much that needs to get done and cleaned up.

00:23:48 Speaker_01
If she's home, she can't help. And if she's not helping, she has to sit and face whatever the hell just happened. Later that night, the group text with her colleagues lights up. There's news about Brian Sicknick.

00:24:02 Speaker_04
We got word that they took him off support and that he had passed away. And that was rough for me.

00:24:18 Speaker_01
Amelia pauses. Her face clouds over.

00:24:22 Speaker_04
I took his shift. Would he still be alive? I mean, I don't even know what he faced when he came in for a normal shift or what that looked like. So if he was in the position that I was in during that, I made it out.

00:24:37 Speaker_04
So it's just kind of that, those emotions, the what ifs really took over for me. And still a lot of anger. And there was- Anger about what? That these people had killed somebody. Over what? Because this,

00:25:00 Speaker_04
You were mad that this guy didn't become president when you wanted him to? Like, who are you? I mean, I'm all for freedom of speech. I'm all for voicing opinions. But who are you to decide who lives and who dies?

00:25:11 Speaker_04
And why is it fair that this guy that was just doing his job, you know, got killed?

00:25:19 Speaker_01
Months after Brian died, the D.C. medical examiner determined he had multiple strokes hours after the battle was over. So the technical determination was he died from natural causes. But the medical examiner also said the riot, quote, played a role.

00:25:38 Speaker_01
Amelia lasted less than 24 hours at home. She had to go back to the Capitol. Doctor's orders be damned.

00:25:45 Speaker_04
I mean, by the time I think I ended up saying, fuck it, to the hospital, I went in after that second day. I think by the I took the seventh off and I literally went in the next day on the eighth.

00:25:56 Speaker_01
Amelia's able to talk about all this now, but back then, talking about her feelings was impossible, not an option. And when she'd run into her colleagues, it's not like they'd open up either.

00:26:07 Speaker_01
They just talked about what they saw, the ways they fought the rioters off. And that just made Amelia feel worse.

00:26:14 Speaker_04
You wanted to be like in the thick of it. You wanted to, you know, so like for me, that was another issue I had with the processing of it was that I was kind of,

00:26:25 Speaker_04
At the very beginning, yes, I was fighting them and I was, but then I kind of, I got very fortunate in the fact that I was just helping the wounded and I wasn't in too many of the thick of it battles.

00:26:37 Speaker_01
Which is good because it meant she was safe, alive. But during all those hours she spent locked in that room, who else could she have helped?

00:26:47 Speaker_04
Could I have, you know, saved somebody? Could I have, you know, there's like, I just felt kind of wimpy, you know, not that, you know, I didn't go and hide in any means.

00:26:58 Speaker_04
And I was like, I don't want, you know, like some, you naturally have a fight or flight. And mine is fight 100. I mean, I am not a flighter. But in some of the, you know, where people were and what they did, mine kind of sounded like,

00:27:13 Speaker_01
You know, I... Amelia trails off. She knows this is not a healthy place to let her mind go. The idea that everyone else was brave and fought, and she hid, a flighter. She now gets that's not what happened, that it's not her fault.

00:27:29 Speaker_01
But that's the Amelia of now. In January 2021, she was consumed with guilt.

00:27:36 Speaker_04
We were all dealing with our problems. Mine were no better than anybody else's. And I just figured, you know, in the process of thinking about what everyone else did, I was sure that somebody had bigger trauma than what I had gone through.

00:27:53 Speaker_01
All these pent-up feelings eventually found a target. Her boyfriend, Rob. Because Rob's usual shift at the Capitol started at midnight. So Rob's schedule was to sleep through the day and work through the night.

00:28:07 Speaker_04
which means nothing in his world had changed because through January 6, he was still sleeping. He had no idea that anything had happened until he just normally woke up from his alarm clock and saw the news alerts.

00:28:24 Speaker_04
And so when you're going through something, you need somebody to blame. I blamed him. I was so mad that I got hurt, that we had officers hurt, that I had gone through this traumatic event and he just fucking slept through it.

00:28:46 Speaker_01
It's in this traumatized, angry, isolated state that Amelia throws herself back into work. And in the days following January 6th, the bosses at Capitol Police decide that everyone will work 12-hour shifts, six days a week.

00:29:03 Speaker_01
They offered hotel rooms downtown, closer to the Capitol. And Amelia took one. For the next few months, Amelia's life was as follows. Wake up. Ignore feelings. Dress burn on hand. Walk to Capitol. Work 12 hours. Walk home. Eat a little. Drink a lot. Sleep.

00:29:24 Speaker_01
Wake up. Do it again.

00:29:25 Speaker_07
She was wound so tight that if you poked her with a pin, she would have exploded.

00:29:31 Speaker_01
Vince Karag first spotted Amelia in the Capitol Police break room. It was a temporary space that had been set up at the Capitol with coffee and a bunch of donated food. Vince was in town from Texas. He's a police officer, but he was in D.C.

00:29:46 Speaker_01
as part of the Wounded Blue, a peer support group made up of officers from all around the country. Their main goal is to help law enforcement officers cope with injuries and trauma. This moment, Vince noticing Amelia, is an important one.

00:30:02 Speaker_01
It would be one of two really important breakthroughs for Amelia's mental health. Vince was sitting with another guy, a colleague of his, and he remembers Amelia walking into the break room because she was apparently impossible to miss.

00:30:16 Speaker_07
She was, you know, in her winter gear, she was wearing a beanie, arms crossed, and you could feel the tension emanating off of her. and she went walking past and me and the other guy looked at each other and went, wow. We got to talk to her.

00:30:40 Speaker_01
No one had seen anything like January 6th. But Vince says this violence was especially shocking to Capitol Police officers. Their days aren't usually filled with the typical nastiness, he calls it, of being a local cop or a state trooper.

00:30:55 Speaker_01
They're not dealing with murder or child abuse, active shooters on the regular. So Vince was on the lookout for Capitol Police officers who really needed support.

00:31:07 Speaker_01
He sees that Amelia's arms are covered in tattoos, brightly colored flowers, a big compass down her forearms. Great, he thinks. An easy way to start conversation. And she'll be easy to track down.

00:31:19 Speaker_07
The next day, around lunchtime, here she comes again. I mean, just same, you know, scowl on her face, just not a happy camper. And I went, here we go, there's my opportunity. So she had gotten her food and she was

00:31:36 Speaker_07
Vince tries asking about Amelia's tattoos. He mentions his dog, a Rottweiler, shows her pictures.

00:31:58 Speaker_04
And he just stood outside the door. And I was like, dude, I'm good. And he's like, you're not good. He's like, but I will wait here until you decide to talk to me. And I was like, well, you're going to be waiting a long freaking time.

00:32:15 Speaker_01
Vince, it turns out, does not mind waiting. He keeps chipping away at her. And finally, they sit down and they talk. Vince asks Amelia, when's the last time you had a day off? I haven't," she says. A good night's sleep? Nope.

00:32:32 Speaker_07
And I leaned into her and I said, are you doing anything you probably shouldn't be doing right now? And she lowered her head and she got a little teary and she shook her head in the affirmative.

00:32:45 Speaker_07
And I said, you know, are you drinking too much when you're off? And she shook her head a little bit more and said, why don't we go have a talk?

00:32:53 Speaker_01
Vince takes Amelia into a private room. And that's where he's really able to get through to her. The first and only person who gets her to open up.

00:33:04 Speaker_07
At one point, she just completely broke down. I just, you know, all I could do is stand there, hold her, and let her cry for probably 10 minutes straight.

00:33:19 Speaker_01
Vince understands trauma. He knows how the violence changed Amelia's brain. So he gives her some coping strategies that might sound basic, but they are essential building blocks toward healing.

00:33:33 Speaker_07
You know, separate yourself from the job, even if that is a day off. Just enjoy being you. Stop drinking. You know, not forever, but for right now. And it's OK to talk about these things. And oh, yeah,

00:33:49 Speaker_07
You've got to eat, you've got to rest, and you've got to exercise. You've got to keep your body healthy because a healthy body leads to a healthy mind.

00:34:01 Speaker_01
Amelia couldn't take all of Vince's advice. She couldn't get time off. The 12-hour shifts continued. Capitol Police Brass, by the way, would face a lot of criticism for those schedules and for many of the ways they handled January 6th and the aftermath.

00:34:17 Speaker_01
But on one of her walks to the hotel after work, Amelia had a second breakthrough. Another coping mechanism, basic yet profound. And this one came from within.

00:34:29 Speaker_04
There was one point where I was very low in life. And I would call my sister up, and I asked to speak to my niece.

00:34:44 Speaker_01
Amelia is one of five Campbell siblings. Her younger sister, Ada Carruth, lived in New Hampshire with her fiancé and four-year-old Topanga. Ada and Amelia were close. Ada calls Amelia M, or Emmy. But Ada says this was kind of an odd request.

00:35:00 Speaker_01
Topanga and Amelia had never talked on the phone. Amelia, by her own admission, actually hates children. She finds them so annoying. So Ada was not sure what to expect.

00:35:11 Speaker_05
The first phone call, I was like, how is this going to go?

00:35:14 Speaker_01
Ada hadn't told Topanga anything about January 6th. She didn't want her daughter to know how scared her mom was, how she worried her big sister had died. Ada wanted to protect her daughter, but she also wanted to help her sister.

00:35:30 Speaker_01
So she handed Topanga the phone.

00:35:32 Speaker_05
She got on the phone and, you know, Topanga's like, hi, Aunty Em. She calls her Aunty Em, O-N-N-E, and then Em, Aunty Em. So she's like, hi, Aunty Em, you know, and Em's like, How's your day? And that's basically how the conversation started.

00:35:46 Speaker_05
What do they talk about? Oh, gosh, favorite animal, color, day, food, what you eat today, what you do with mom today.

00:35:56 Speaker_04
You know, dad made her brush her teeth and he's a horrible person and, you know, just normal kind of kid stuff. But it was it was always just what I needed.

00:36:06 Speaker_05
And so every night, 7 p.m., Topanga goes to bed at 730. Every night, 7 p.m., she was on the phone with Em.

00:36:12 Speaker_01
These conversations never strayed into Amelia's trauma. But having this new routine, being distracted by the little things that made life important, they had a powerful effect on Amelia. It punctured a hole in the darkness. Wake up. Work 12 hours.

00:36:30 Speaker_01
Call Topanga. Realize there's a world outside the Capitol. Remember how to interact with civilians, people who love you. Feel a little relief. and do it again.

00:36:42 Speaker_04
She kind of just kept me from, honestly kept me from being suicidal.

00:36:56 Speaker_01
A reminder, if you need support, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. That's 988. Hearing this admission from Amelia made me realize how far the ripple effects of January 6th can truly go.

00:37:12 Speaker_01
It touched everyone in Amelia's life, even if they were too young to realize it.

00:37:19 Speaker_01
Ada calls January 6th Emmy's thing, because in their family, that's what it is, a traumatic thing that happened to their sister, their daughter, that affected the entire Campbell family.

00:37:31 Speaker_05
Emmy wasn't quite honest with the

00:37:34 Speaker_05
impact Topanga was making until after like much later after the phone calls had ended and and I just kind of sat there and I was just like Wow, I'm glad I'm glad you have that person, you know, I'm glad you You know and a part of me wishes it was me like I wish I could have been that person for her to help her through that but I Wasn't and that's okay.

00:37:55 Speaker_05
That's okay because she she needed somebody and Topanga was that somebody and

00:38:07 Speaker_01
These two bright spots, Topanga and Vince, they help carry Amelia through the next four months of 12-hour shifts. Even after Vince goes home to Texas, he keeps calling or texting her, sometimes just saying, hey, how you doing?

00:38:23 Speaker_01
But it helped, especially since work never got easier. On January 9th, Capitol Police Officer Howie Leibengood died by suicide. A Metropolitan Police Officer, Jeffrey Smith, also died by suicide after the attack.

00:38:40 Speaker_01
And then, just months later, in April, a man drove his car into two Capitol Police officers, injuring one and killing the other. Officer Billy Evans, who worked in the first responders unit, Amelia's team.

00:38:56 Speaker_04
It's just another new traumatic event that we all had to go through. And I wasn't as close with Evans as I was with Brian, but I had worked with him multiple times. And it was just another person that I knew that I had worked with that was killed.

00:39:18 Speaker_04
And it Then I just couldn't process it. I had no time. I was like, we don't have any days off. I was like, we have no time. We have no energy. I have no way to process any of this. And it just all kind of came flooding back.

00:39:42 Speaker_04
I remember being on post and looking at my phone, going into a calendar. I think I did like 16 days and on my break I went down and I put in my two weeks notice and I was done.

00:39:55 Speaker_04
I never said it was because I just couldn't mentally handle it anymore, emotionally handling, because I don't want anyone ever thinking that I was weak.

00:40:04 Speaker_01
Amelia's boss later told her there was a mass exodus of officers after she quit. In fact, 20% of Capitol Police officers quit after January 6th. Amelia packs up and heads home to New Hampshire. She leaves her dream life and her boyfriend in D.C.

00:40:26 Speaker_01
Rob and Amelia definitely broke up, by the way. She says it likely would have been their fate anyway, but January 6th did not help. Over the next year or so, Amelia bounces around. A friend's house, then Ada's house, then her parents.

00:40:41 Speaker_01
She tries an old security job at an outdoor concert venue. But she can't handle the crowds. When people cheer, she collapses to the ground. She was constantly on high alert. Anything could set her off. Here's how Ada describes Amelia back then.

00:40:56 Speaker_05
She was like a, like a firework. You know when you light a firework and then you have like that 10 seconds to run away and it lights up? She was like that.

00:41:06 Speaker_05
So I could say good morning to her in the morning and be like, hi, and she'd be in this fantastic mood. I could turn around with a glass of milk. Why are you giving me milk? Why isn't it coffee? I want coffee. Okay, I'll get you coffee.

00:41:19 Speaker_05
Like it could be so instant. We were always kind of on edge, but I don't blame her. It wasn't her fault, you know,

00:41:29 Speaker_01
It wasn't her fault. Slowly, Amelia will come to understand that. Therapy was a big help. Vince set her up with a trauma therapist in New Hampshire, and it took a while.

00:41:42 Speaker_01
Amelia didn't say much in the first few sessions, but she kept showing up, and her therapist kept asking things.

00:41:48 Speaker_04
I was like, oh, she's trying so hard. So I was like, maybe I'll start talking. It was kind of like that subconscious like, and then I just, I finally opened up a little bit and it just started feeling good.

00:42:07 Speaker_04
And I would open up a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more.

00:42:10 Speaker_01
But Amelia thinks the biggest impact on her mental health was Scotty.

00:42:16 Speaker_04
Hey, baby. Hey, baby.

00:42:18 Speaker_01
Scotty is a very high energy, very fluffy Pomsky, a Pomeranian and Husky mix.

00:42:25 Speaker_04
Hi. Hi. You ready to go out?

00:42:32 Speaker_01
This is from a video Amelia texted to me to show me how amp Scotty is when she gets home. Vince brought Scotty and Amelia together. He hooked Amelia up with a nonprofit that gives trained emotional support animals to first responders.

00:42:46 Speaker_01
Amelia brought Scotty home just over a year after January 6th and her life immediately improved. Scotty is specifically trained in crowd control. So when they're out in public, he circles around Amelia and pushes people away.

00:43:02 Speaker_01
He even helps Amelia sleep. She sometimes has night terrors. And when she's in the throes of one, Scotty is trained to wake her up. He turns on the lights. And if that doesn't work, he jumps on her chest until she gets up.

00:43:16 Speaker_01
Amelia wasn't back to her old self. She doesn't think she'll ever be that person again. But she was better.

00:43:23 Speaker_04
I was moving on, you know, and so it was kind of being easier to realize that all these things were kind of falling into place of my life and where I'm at now and what I need to do to cope with it. Hey, I hate to bother you.

00:43:41 Speaker_04
Do you know if they're working on anything on Lancaster Road for the water?

00:43:45 Speaker_01
Back in Northumberland, Amelia is still on the case of why isn't this woman's water on. She's sticking her head out the window of her cruiser, talking to a town employee who seems annoyed that Officer Campbell is interrupting his landscaping duties.

00:44:01 Speaker_01
It is wild to see Amelia take on this very non-police matter, knowing how her law enforcement career started. Northumberland is an entirely other planet from Capitol Hill.

00:44:13 Speaker_01
It's honestly stunning just to see Amelia in uniform, knowing she's constantly fighting off the remnants of January 6th. The chemical burn on her hand still bothers her. And at any moment, a call could come in that takes her right back to that day.

00:44:29 Speaker_01
She returned to law enforcement in December of 2022. And Ada, Amelia's sister, she has a lot of thoughts about this. I read some of the transcript of my interview with Ada as Amelia drove around.

00:44:42 Speaker_01
So I asked Ada, what do you think about Amelia being a cop? And she said, I thought it was real stupid. What is she freaking doing? I'm sorry, Em. She says in the recording so many times, Amelia, she says, I'm sorry, Em.

00:45:00 Speaker_01
But I think that's the stupidest thing. She's back in the field that caused this PTSD. There's so many other jobs she could do so well. It's so stupid to put yourself in a vulnerable position.

00:45:10 Speaker_01
Why would you put yourself in a position to have something bad happening to you again?

00:45:15 Speaker_04
Yeah, she's not wrong. I think, because right now, at the end of the day, it's the only thing I know how to do. And I think I do it well. So, no, I mean, I have that conflict with certain calls that come through at certain times.

00:45:35 Speaker_04
And, you know, I think about that.

00:45:42 Speaker_01
Amelia's PTSD, depression, and anxiety, they're not going anywhere. But Amelia says she knows how to take better care of herself. Having a quieter police gig is actually kind of helpful. She visits her moo cow friends when her anxiety is high.

00:45:58 Speaker_01
The calls, though annoying, aren't as violent. And she needs the experience because Amelia has a new dream job.

00:46:07 Speaker_01
Amelia wants to start her own nonprofit, where local police departments hire her to come in and create mental health support programs for their officers. Over the past few years, Amelia has spent any spare brain space that she has on this goal.

00:46:21 Speaker_01
She got a master's degree in forensic psychology, and now she's applying for Ph.D. programs. Why do you want to do that?

00:46:32 Speaker_04
because I almost died. I mean, I don't think, had I not had the friends that I made after, if I hadn't been talking to Vince, if I didn't have the family that I had, I wouldn't be here today. I know I wouldn't.

00:46:50 Speaker_04
So that's huge for me to, you know, when you kind of go through something, you know that your life is worth living. And why are you still here? And I think this is my purpose, is to make sure that others know that they need to be here too.

00:47:07 Speaker_04
And to help them through that, to know that they're not alone.

00:47:17 Speaker_01
It's okay to cry, Amelia.

00:47:19 Speaker_04
Nah, I'm in a cruiser. I would look terrible.

00:47:30 Speaker_01
If you've been wondering how Amelia feels about the election next week, you might be surprised to hear that she is pretty unfazed by it.

00:47:38 Speaker_01
Some of her former Capitol Police officer colleagues are very involved in the election, campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris even. But that's not Amelia's style. The girl hates politics.

00:47:50 Speaker_01
I asked her about the election and about the rioters themselves many times. The people who the federal government has now charged with harming her, they're people who former President Donald Trump has called patriots.

00:48:04 Speaker_01
In the first few months of 2021, Emilia says, she was definitely mad at Trump. She says he acted childish, like a toddler. He was supposed to be the person that we look up to, she told me.

00:48:16 Speaker_01
Instead, his supporters were brainwashed, she says, into conducting violence on his behalf. But she's moved on from that anger. She's not mad at Trump anymore. And her feelings about the rioters themselves are more nuanced.

00:48:31 Speaker_01
She is forever a Capitol Police officer, a person whose job it was to protect our freedom of speech. There are plenty of people, she says, who did not break any laws that day, who were just there to voice their opinion.

00:48:45 Speaker_01
But for the rioters who climbed the walls, stormed the Capitol, stole things, broke things, wanted to hang Vice President Mike Pence and hurt Amelia's friends, she wants those people to take responsibility.

00:48:58 Speaker_01
And it bothers her that so many people still aren't, even to this day. Officer Campbell. We're nearing the end of our ride-along through Northumberland and Groveton, and suddenly, Amelia's phone lights up. It's the woman without the water.

00:49:21 Speaker_04
Oh, well, perfect. You actually may... I just got in contact with the water department, so they may be knocking on your door, just so you know, because I told them about your situation and they were going to come check it out.

00:49:35 Speaker_04
But I'm glad to hear that it's back, and I would fire that plumber.

00:49:41 Speaker_01
A break in the case, the water is back on. Amelia breaks out into a huge smile.

00:49:48 Speaker_04
If you ever have any comments, questions, or concerns, please don't hesitate to call, okay? All right, have a great day. Bye. And another crime solved in Crofton.

00:50:23 Speaker_01
This story was reported and written by me, Lauren Chooljian. Jason Moon produced and mixed this piece and composed all the music. Katie Culinary is our editor. Additional editing by Dan Baric, Todd Bookman, Taylor Quimby, and Kate Dario.

00:50:40 Speaker_01
The audio you heard from January 6th was sourced from videos posted by Capitol rioters and protesters on social media and then later published by ProPublica. The audio of the police radio traffic that day came from a congressional hearing.

00:50:54 Speaker_01
Photography by John Tully and podcast artwork by Sarah Plord. NHPR's news director is Dan Barrick. Our director of podcast is Rebecca Lavoie. Amelia's Thing is a production of The Document Team at New Hampshire Public Radio.