WALSENBURG - It was James Chamberlain's third day of vacation on Aug. 10, 2011.
The time off was long overdue. He has not taken any since being promoted to chief of the Walsenburg Police Department in March of 2010. The job and the responsibilities still felt new.
"I still feel like a patrol sergeant in a chief's position," Chamberlain said with a smile.
He smiles a lot, even when he tells the story of the day when he could've been killed.
The morning of Aug. 10, Chamberlain was off. One of his plans was to stop by the office to make some copies of a disk for the department's insurance company.
"I thought, 'OK, perfect time. I will take my daughter to my father-in-law's, he can have some fun watching her that day while I come back here, make the copy of the disk, and go back to my house and change a radiator on my pick-up truck,'" Chamberlain said.
The radiator was not meant to be.
Chamberlain says he checked his email and printed out a Be On The Lookout (BOLO) for the Dougherty gang. Lee Grace, Dylan and Ryan Dougherty were on the run for over a week, evading police in Florida and Georgia. They were on the FBI's Most Wanted List, considered armed and dangerous.
Chamberlain says he printed out the BOLO for his officers.
"That's when I first started hearing Colorado State Patrol dispatch say they had a sighting of the car," Chamberlain said. "I knew they could conceivably be in the area, I just didn't think they would be coming this direction."
But they were, and police were chasing them down southbound Interstate 25, towards Walsenburg.
"The trooper said they were being shot at, about mile marker 64, southbound on I-25," Chamberlain recalled listening to radio traffic. "That's when I started thinking, 'OK - vest or not, I have my gun, I'm a police officer, I need to go out and help.'"
Chamberlain got in the car and drove. He raced to the highway that's only a few minutes away from the police department.
"A lot of things went through my mind during those two to three minutes," he described, "'OK, I'm in civilian clothes, I don't have a vest on, I have a wife, I have a baby girl. If something happens to me, how will they be taken care of?'"
He had a fleeting thought to stop by his home on the way to the scene, grab a vest and a shotgun, but there was no time.
"As soon as I rounded the corner, there was a big cloud of dust and the car rolled up on the guard rail right in front of me," Chamberlain described, "The first thing I thought was, 'OK here we go.'"
Chamberlain was face-to-face with three of the most dangerous people in the country, alone, with a line of law enforcement just seconds away.
"I opened the door, drew my gun," he said.
He says he first saw an unarmed Ryan Dougherty running across the field and then noticed Lee Grace, with her MAC10 machine pistol.
"I told her, 'Stop, police, drop the gun,'" Chamberlain described, "When I told her the third time, she stopped, she looked at me, and she started raising it in a two hand hold like she was going to purposely aim and fire at me. I'd already made up my mind, I was in civilian clothes, I didn't have a vest on, if anyone had pointed a gun at me, it was going to be them instead of me. I was able to fire first and hit her, and she went down."
Lee Grace sustained a gunshot wound to the hip, Chamberlain says. The media in the past reported she'd been shot in the leg. She was treated at a local hospital before going to the Huerfano County Jail.
Chamberlain then ordered Dylan Dougherty to the ground. Seconds later, more police arrived. Ryan was later caught in the bushes near the highway. Just like that, the week-long, nationwide manhunt was over.
"It was kind of surreal," Chamberlain said. "I really couldn't fathom in my mind that they would come to Colorado."
Three Air Force tours overseas, two in Iraq have shown the chief a lot.
"But nothing that was as up close and personal as this," he said.
He says his faith has taught him it wasn't a coincidence that he was there that day.
"Everything worked out the way it was supposed to. I firmly believe that you're put in the right place at the right time for the right things, a lot of things fell together for this to happen, the way I'm sure it was ordained to happen," Chamberlin said.
The Dougherty siblings are still being held in the Huerfano County Jail. They're facing a number of charges in several counties across the country, including attempted murder of a peace officer.
They will first stand trial in Colorado before being extradited to face charges in other states.
(KUSA-TV © 2011 Multimedia Holdings Corporation)