A Travis County deputy swept away in a flooded creek was found dead in Lake Austin on Friday after a painstaking search that drew more than 80 first responders to help, according to authorities.
Travis County Sheriff Greg Hamilton said he was numb from losing Senior Deputy Jessica Hollis, who recently marked her seventh year with the sheriffs office.
Hamilton said he had told Hollis family on Thursday night that he would bring her home.
We wanted to bring her back alive, Hamilton said with tears in his eyes. Shes back home, and shes not out there by herself.
As the rain had poured early Thursday, Hollis was checking a low water crossing in the 3400 block of Fritz Hughes Park Road in Northwest Travis County to see if anyone was in danger, officials have said.
At 1:52 a.m., she reported on her radio that her car was being swept away.
When first responders arrived at 2:06 a.m., they found the car submerged in water that soon receded enough to reveal that she was not in the vehicle.
Hamilton said he suspected that Hollis, a member of the sheriffs offices dive team and a strong swimmer, left her car and tried to escape the swift current.
Dozens of people from local, state and federal law enforcement agencies joined the search for Hollis, an effort that was hampered by another round of storms and heavy rain Friday morning. The search involved helicopters, boats and rescue dogs that helped scour brush and sift through debris in Bear Creek leading into Lake Austin.
But the dive team Hollis belonged to found her at the mouth of that creek in Lake Austin around 2 oclock Friday afternoon.
Before the motorcade that included an ambulance carrying Hollis body left the shoreline on Friday, about a dozen men and women who helped look for the deputy lined up on the side of the street holding American flags.
Senior Deputy Brett Spicer and four other dive team members swam her to shore. He said it was one of the hardest things hes had to do as an officer.
The people should know that she gave her life she was out that night patrolling our streets in Travis County to keep people safe, Spicer said. She gave her life protecting others.
Hollis was highly regarded among her colleagues and was a cheerful, pleasant presence at the sheriffs office, said Spicer, who is also president of the Travis County Sheriffs Law Enforcement Association. Spicer said she was a part of our huge family, and she was a great cop.
Before joining the sheriffs office in 2007, Hollis briefly worked for the Austin Police Department, her first job after becoming a licensed peace officer in Texas, according to personnel records from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement.
As a rookie officer, she helped arrest a high-profile suspect accused of dealing crack cocaine.
She and her husband, who is an officer with the Austin Police Department, both had worked at Calhoun County Emergency Medical Services in Port Lavaca about a decade ago before leaving to take law enforcement jobs in the Austin area, said Carl King, that agencys assistant director.
At the sheriffs office, Hollis became a senior deputy who also had worked as a patrol deputy and in the vice unit. Spicer said she was a master scuba diver, the highest certification after instructor.
She had taught her 12-year-old son to scuba dive this year, Spicer said.
Many of her conversations always circled back around to her son, he said. She loved him very much.
