ROCKDALE COUNTY, Ga. — UPDATE Friday, May 28, 2021--Deputy Blanchard's family reports that she woke up today, and doctors were able to take her off of her ventilator. She is still not breathing entirely on her own, and "she'll still need to be monitored the next 48 to 72 hours, she's still very tired." She can't speak, yet, but she is texting. "She actually called me," her wife, Alexandria, said of the text she just received from her. "We're so grateful for all the prayers and support, it means so much to us, it's looking very good, now" compared to a few days ago. "Please keep praying for her" during this next phase of her recovery, Alexandria said.
--------------------
Tuesday, May 25, 2021
Ever since she was a child, she wanted to help people -- be a first responder, a crime fighter.
Now, veteran Rockdale County Sheriff’s Deputy Patsy Blanchard, 43, is in intensive care in an Athens hospital, fighting COVID-19, fighting for her life.
“And everything happened just like that,” said Dep. Blanchard’s cousin Tabitha Cole, on Tuesday. “Almost in the blink of an eye.”
Blanchard and Cole grew up together as sisters, and Cole says that during the pandemic Blanchard had always taken every precaution, in a job that cannot be done by working remotely at home.
Blanchard is a Crime Scene Technician in the Rockdale County Sheriff’s Office Crime Scene Investigation Unit.
Sheriff Eric Levett calls her “a dedicated employee” who joined the Office in 2015 as a Detention Deputy and has “worked very hard to accomplish her goals.”
Blanchard’s family says she had not gotten vaccinated, yet, because she was concerned about how the vaccine might interact with her life-long, severe asthma.
Then, on May 8, Blanchard tested positive, along with her wife, Alexandria, and their son, Adam.
It hit Blanchard the hardest.
“I didn’t think she was going to get it (COVID) if she hadn’t had it by now,” Cole said, “because she could have been exposed on a daily basis with her job. It was so fast, within a matter of days she was just gone, on intubation and everything, in ICU. And now that she’s been intubated, we can’t reach out, we can’t communicate with her,” and, she says, they are not allowed inside to visit her. “So we just pray.... We just hope every day it’s going to be the day that she’s going to be able to be woken back up.”
“She could have been exposed anywhere,” said Blanchard’s close friend, Charlene Campbell-Dorner, a retired deputy with the Henry County Sheriff’s Office.
She and Blanchard worked together as deputies in Henry County before Blanchard transferred to Rockdale County.
“She called me and said, ‘Well, guess who tested positive?'”
Only a few days earlier, Blanchard had earned her Master of Science Degree in Criminal Justice from St. Leo University, specializing in Forensic Science—working on her graduate studies while working full-time.
Campbell said after that phone call, Blanchard declined rapidly, and a few days later, “she woke up and couldn’t breathe at all.”
The law enforcement community, across Georgia and beyond, Campbell says, has rallied around Blanchard and her family, in support.
Everyone—certain the worst of the pandemic was long gone. For everyone.
“It proves that it can hit anybody, even now,” Campbell said, who thinks of nothing, now, but Blanchard and her family, calling this time, “Torture. Torture.... I thought the pandemic was close to the end.... Tell people that you love them, every day.... I feel like I’m on pause. The pause button is on. I can’t keep moving until the play button goes back on and that she’s awake. I just want my best friend to wake up.”
“She’s just naturally good,” Cole said of her cousin. “She just wants to do good for the world. She’s amazing. She’s such a genuinely good person. Naturally, just good.”
“With our prayers,” Sheriff Levett said, “we hope she quickly returns to the work she enjoys.... Keep Investigator Blanchard in your thoughts and prayers and pray for her family’s strength during her recovery.”