A HEROIC ACT by Spokane County Corrections Officer Tom Frantz probably saved a woman’s life earlier this year.

Photo: The Spokesman-Review

Tom Frantz demonstrates how he broke an inmate's fall

Frantz, a member of Local 492, caught the woman and broke her fall as she leaped from a railing in the corrections center.

Part of the reason he was able to act as he did is through the union encouraging the administration to give him the training he has received, Frantz adds.

“I am proud that he is a member of our union,” adds Gordon Smith, Staff Representative in Council 2’s Spokane office.

Frantz, 39, had been in a small interview cubicle at the base of the corrections building’s mezzanine stairs when a 22-year-old woman ran up the stairs and climbed on the railing. Frantz ran out of the cubicle and ordered the woman to get off the railing.
“I could tell by the look in her eyes that something was very wrong,” Frantz says.

She ignored him and climbed higher, reaching about 20 feet from the floor. As she poised to dive, Frantz recalled one inmate had died after jumping from the railing. Another was seriously hurt.

Realizing if he climbed the stairs he probably would not reach her in time, Frantz moved to where he calculated she would land should she jump. Within seconds, the woman, who weighs 135 pounds, dived backward, plunging into Frantz’s outstretched arms.

“I couldn’t actually catch her, but I broke her fall,” Frantz recalls.

The woman suffered a cracked pelvis and was hospitalized overnight.

Frantz suffered a small scratch on his nose, his teeth were numb, and he had a sore neck and shoulders. But he was back at work the next day.

Frantz credits some of his ability to act as he did that day to being a member of Local 492.

“Without a strong union such as the one we belong to, a lot of the training sessions that are associated with taking action like this might not have been possible,” he says.

“Union requests of the administration to provide training and equipment enable us to do our job better,” Frantz says. “Without that, I might not have been as well prepared to take the action I did.”

Smith, of Council 2, says Frantz’s heroic act is an example of how Frantz’s line of work is becoming increasingly dangerous due to the kind of prisoners that are being held in the corrections center. Among them are more mental-health patients.

“It makes their jobs all the more dangerous and challenging,” Smith says.