HH-65 Dolphin helicopters from Air Station Humboldt Bay practice cliff rescues in Northern California.

If you’ve ever flown in a helicopter, you know how it feels the moment the machine’s clatter exceeds gravity and you take flight. It’s not an eager leap into the sky but more of a slipping transition from parked to climbing that’s exhilarating for its unexpectedness... even when you know it’s coming. Makes my back tingle just to think about it.

JJ Briggs knows this feeling well. He’s coaxed U.S. Coast Guard HH-65 Dolphin helicopters into the air well over a thousand times. The Dolphin is a special aircraft; too small and twitchy for it’s huge job but deft at getting into the right places at the right times. The Coast Guard has been using them to snatch desperate people from rough seas, crumbling cliffs and mountain tops for decades. They can land in tight spots and hover with incredible agility in unforgiving conditions. Thousands of people have looked up at the Dolphin’s pointy fuselage from the swinging end of a vibrating hoist cable and thought that they’ve never seen anything as beautiful. But this isn’t a story about the helicopter. This love story is about the guy in it - or who used to be in it.

Today JJ retires from the Coast Guard. His Dolphin days are behind him. Like the helicopters he is so incredible at flying, JJ doesn’t leap eagerly into things, all bravado and swagger, instead he slips into brilliance with humility and grace. When I first met him he was fresh out of high school and we lived together on a historic tall ship. We made an unlikely pair, but as many people have learned, JJ is easy to like and he quickly became one of my closest crew mates and friends. It didn’t take me long to read JJ. He was kind, energetic and observant. When overconfident blow-hards came up short, he’d step up with enthusiasm and charm. I can’t think of a single time when he didn’t meet a challenge; whether it was dressing up as Peter Pan to scamper through the rigging as a foil to a growling Captain Hook (much to the delight of hundreds of guests at a Halloween haunted ships festival) or when he took on the role of ship’s Purser and all of the late night book-keeping that thankless job entailed. To put it succinctly, JJ says yes when everyone else looks for reasons to say no.

Our friendship has endured for almost thirty years and I’ve enjoyed the privilege of watching JJ live an incredible life. He’s my favorite hero.

After our time on the Lady Washington, we both landed in Seattle where JJ was just out of Coast Guard boot camp and standing watch on a docked ship. He knew this wasn’t his course, busting rust and mopping heads, but in JJ fashion I never heard him complain. At lunch one day he mentioned that he’d like to work his way into the aviation side of the Coast Guard. He’d looked into being a flight mechanic on helicopters, but the waiting list was a year long at least. He was resolved to wait it out and on a trip home to Coos Bay he impulsively dropped by the Coast Guard air station there and introduced himself. I saw him a couple weeks later and he told me about the visit and how he loved seeing the helicopters. This is where a theme emerges in this story.

When JJ dropped by the North Bend air station he met the base commander, who made note of this charming kid with humble initiative. This officer made some calls and JJ found himself in flight mechanic school in Oklahoma soon after. Prior to leaving he told me about this incredible coincidence of opportunity. I laughed and told him that it was no fluke, no coincidence. JJ is impressive and anyone looking for great people to join their team would point to him. In my mind, it was obvious that this base commander snatched up JJ as quickly as he could get the orders signed.

When I visited JJ at North Bend he was fresh out of flight mechanic school and quickly making a name for himself. On one visit I saw him approached one after another by his peers looking for help. In each case, JJ eagerly jumped in. In no time he’d accumulated experience and opportunities. As a flight mechanic, he was 25% of a Dolphin flight crew but because he’s JJ he did far more than run the hoist and monitor the aircraft’s systems. His unique position in the center of the aircraft gave him a clear view of everything and everyone. The pilots up front relied on him and the rescue swimmer in the back put his life into JJ’s hands every time the door opened. He learned fast and became the crewman everyone wanted on their aircraft.

In fact, his acumen as a flight mechanic had caught the eyes of the Coast Guard’s Standards Team. This highly-experienced crew of pilots, flight mechs and swimmers spent their days bopping from air station to air station training air crews and ensuring that every person in a Coast Guard flight suit was up to the demanding standards required to survive and thrive in the unforgiving world of worst-case-scenario search and rescue. The “Stan Team” offered JJ a spot and he was off to Mobile, Alabama.

On the Stan Team, JJ flew with and assessed every Dolphin flight mechanic in the Coast Guard, literally leaning over their shoulder as they operated the hoist, managed the helicopter’s systems and maintained the complex aircraft. His travel schedule was enthralling: Puerto Rico to Travers City to Miami to Hawaii to New Orleans and everywhere in between. We connected during Stan Team visits to Port Angeles and North Bend and I loved hearing about his adventures. He began to talk about becoming an officer and transitioning to the front seats of the helicopter. I helped him refine his applications to Officers Candidate School and year after year he faced rejection. I told him it wasn’t him - he was certainly officer material, and he’d earned his private pilot’s license so he obviously could fly. I reasoned that the leadership of the Stan Team cherished his talent and kept him out of OCS so he could serve out two tours on the team (reasoning JJ has never agreed with). What else could explain that the very year he turned 29 (the OCS window closes at 30) and the conclusion of his Stan Team commitment, his OCS application was green-lighted? I contend that from the jump, eyes high up the chain of command have been watching JJ and invisible hands have guided his path.

When JJ earned his commission, I was thrilled. He was off to flight school in Pensacola and soon after back to Mobile for training in the Dolphin. With his wings, he moved to Arcata, California and began flying the rugged Lost Coast. We visited him there and he was living a charmed life. It was so great to see him as a pilot after all of his years as a mechanic and it wasn’t long before he had the Stan Team banging on his door again. Back in Mobile, JJ became to only person to ever serve as both a flight mechanic and pilot on the Stan Team. Once again, he circled the country flying with crews everywhere. He did annual stints at the Advanced Helicopter Rescue School in Astoria and we’d enjoy visits with him there. He’d taught there as a mechanic, and brought his unique perspective and experience to the job of teaching Coast Guard, Navy and Air Force crews how to operate in the toughest conditions imaginable. These skills would prove vital for him when Hurricane Harvey crushed Houston in 2017.

With the massive storm still whipping Texas, JJ and other crews from Mobile flew in to rescue people trapped in the rising flood waters. As the first helicopter up in the hurricane, JJ and his co-pilot Greg Bukata, along with Flight Mechanic Chris Flores and Rescue Swimmer Tyler Gantt, began rescuing stranded Houstonians in the worst the storm’s fury. In the middle of the night with bands of torrential rain and winds well above normal Coast Guard flight thresholds, JJ and his crew pushed their Dolphin beyond its limits to save people from their flooded homes. The story of this mission is now cannon in Coast Guard history and JJ has been well decorated for his courage, but when I saw him a couple of weeks after the hurricane, he wasn’t boastful or proud. Up to this point in our friendship JJ had always been confident, albeit in a humble way. Post-Harvey he seemed shaken. I think stories of heroism take on mythology and hyperbole, which makes for great theater. In the case of JJ’s hours in the skies above Houston in a malfunctioning helicopter filled with his crew and up to 14 innocent survivors, his undeniable heroism should be tempered with the knowledge that his confidence and his affinity for saying yes came right up against the harshest of truths - he almost died. When I spoke to him right after Harvey, he was no longer the young, eager, joyful JJ I had known for years. Instead I saw a man a little more like me - scared of what could be.

JJ upstaging an entire life boat crew during a televised school field trip in Coos Bay, 2004.

The most remarkable part of this portion of JJ’s career in the Coast Guard is how he took in his experiences in the hurricane and pivoted them into improving the Coast Guard’s culture of Semper Paratus. As an instructor he’s had a hand in training hundreds of people, written manuals and delivered dozens of classes. I’ve seen him sweat learning new things so he can turn around and give that knowledge to others. He’s also been a great ambassador for the Coast Guard to the community. In his flight mechanic days I watched him single-handedly enthrall hundreds of school kids with nothing more than a rescue basket while a lifeboat crew nearby struggled to look cool. Later in Arcata, I toured the air base with a group of senior citizens who fell under JJ’s spell as he showed them around one of the Dolphin helicopters and patiently answered all of their questions.

JJ sharing his world with awe-struck civilians, 2015

Pardon this pause in the story for an observation…

I’ve met at least 20 Coast Guard pilots, flight mechs and swimmers over the years and they’ve all been polite, competent and earnest, but all but a few carried an air of self-promotion. I’ve seen it a lot in first responders and other people who routinely put themselves in harm’s way. I’m not going to say that they crave the attention their cool uniforms and job titles bring, but they don’t hate it. Most I’ve talked to use a lot of jargon and acronyms to signal their domain expertise and convey their important role in society and I’ve always been put off by it. Earned or not, swagger isn’t inspirational to me. Perhaps when I’m not around, JJ projects this type of persona, but I strongly doubt it. I suspect he’s unique amongst his peers because his roots are planted in the humble soil of starting out at the bottom.

A Coast Guard flight mechanic practices hoisting at the Advanced Helicopter Rescue School, 2009

Where was I? JJ, back in Mobile, completed his second stint on the Stan Team. In his first run with the team he served from 2005 to 2010 and returned as an officer in 2016 through 2020. That’s a long time to be in Mobile, Alabama so JJ sought placement in San Francisco for his final duty station. When he and Courtney moved to San Francisco we were thrilled to have them back on the west coast and enjoyed seeing more of them. Whenever we had the chance, JJ and I would sit and talk about life’s adventures. I’ve always loved hearing about his work and since I have some working knowledge of aviation, his stories were rich with details that interest me. As his time in the Coast Guard wound down, we would talk a lot about the next chapter.

When I had the chance to visit him on deployment in Southern California last year, I took the opportunity to get up close to another HH-65 Dolphin and reflect on the remarkable run those charming helicopters have had. The first time I was in one was in 1996 when I shot a feature story on rescue swimmers in Coos Bay. Flying in the Dolphin was one of the biggest thrills of my life and I’ve had a strong affinity for them ever since, but they are a mis-matched tool for the task. The Coast Guard has tweaked and modified the airframe many times to move it closer to the ideal but it remains too small and too twitchy and now it’s too old. But it still works. The Dolphin works hard and always says yes. The Coast Guard’s other helicopter, the HH-60 Jayhawk, spends more time in pieces than it does in the air and despite its power and utility, no one wants to dangle under one. There’s something to be said for showing up, doing the job, and getting back in one piece.

JJ at the controls, Northern California 2014

JJ is one of the last people in the Coast Guard to fly in every model of the Dolphin. Like his plucky little orange helicopter he’s been there. His numbers are worth pondering: He’s flown as a flight mechanic in the HH-65 for 588 sorties for a total of 1,200 hours. That’s equivalent to 30, 40-hour work weeks in the air. As a pilot he’s logged 1,145 sorties totaling almost 2,300 hours. Combined with his training time, he’s got 2,503 hours of flight time. He’s flown all over the United States and done ship-based deployments in Mexico and Costa Rica.

The Coast Guard keeps track of a lot of things, as you’d expect, and the number that they have for JJ that makes me smile the most is this one - 135. That’s the number of people JJ has saved. In a 25-year career filled with incredible stories, I’d love to hear each and every one of theirs. I’m incredibly proud of JJ. As a father, I point to him as a prime example of what a man should be. It’s been an honor to watch him accomplish so much, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out his greatest achievement - he’s returned from 100% of the missions he’s taken.

Congratulations, JJ. I love you, brother. It’s not your style to take a bow, but this time you should.

And I can’t wait to see you fly the Super Puma this summer. They say it’s just a big fat Dolphin.