Saturday Spotlight: Deputy Coroner Bucky Mock

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is the 13th in a series of profiles that manninglive.com will be posting each week to highlight our first responders and dispatchers who keep Clarendon County a safe place to live. After each web posting, the piece will appear in the following Thursday’s Manning Times.

It's possible Bucky Mock never sleeps.

Most everyone in the Clarendon County area who knows him knows he's a volunteer firefighter and deputy coroner. Those two responsibilities keep him busy enough.

But Mock is also a registered nurse with Clarendon EMS and has specialized training in forensics that aids him in his coroner's work. Just a few years ago, as if he didn't have enough to do, he took specialized training through an Internet course out of Dade County, Florida, in underwater police science and technology. He's a trained HAZMAT technician and a certified driving instructor.

He's also a certified scuba instructor and competes annually in various runs. He has also scaled El Capitan at least three times.

All of these activities he's continued well into his 1970s. And he's done them all while having cancer as well. He was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in March 2013.

A type of cancer that doesn't go into typically remission or be cured, it affects Mock's plasma cells in his blood.

He gets regular checkups every three months to make sure his "levels" are all good.

Now 73, Mock added one more activity to his plate in the late fall and early winter, spending more than a month in Puerto Rico helping locals with the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Harvey, which left much of the island without infrastructure and electricity.

"I'm also a member of the state's Disaster Medical Assistant Team," he Mock said. "It's a part of the National Disaster Medical System and part of Health and Human Services. You volunteer to be part of this time, and when you're activated, you become technically an employee of the government."

Mock was deployed on Sept. 20, just 14 days after Irma ravaged the island.

While in Puerto Rico, he stayed in a tent and bathed at a local hospital. But that was nothing, he said, compared to the residents who were sleeping on their damaged roofs to keep cool at night.

"It's a sad, sad sight over there," Mock said.

"When we got there, it was pretty much right after the storm," Mock added. "There were some people that were there after Harvey came through and were still on the island. They were basically trapped when Irma came through."

Mock said the one word that stuck with him as he got off the plane in Puerto Rico was "destruction."

"It was just nothing but destruction," Mock said. "Lots of homes damaged, lots of debris everywhere, trees down, roads were completely closed for trees and mudslides and washouts."

Mock's primary objective as part of his team was working on generators. He also helped check on how local hospitals were faring.

"Our team from South Carolina was one of the first teams that went away from San Juan to start to set up a treatment area further into the country away from the capital," said Mock. They ultimately set up at Fajardo, which is in the northeastern corner of the island.

"At that time, I helped provide medical assistance," he said. "Cities were getting electricity back, but the country and mountainous regions, it will be a long, long time before they get anything resembling a normal life back.

Mock said the team's biggest concern wa a local lack of good water.

"There is a lot of work that still needs to be done," he said.

Mock actually stayed behind in the country when his South Carolina comrades left. He joined up with a North Carolina team, and when they left, he joined those from New York.

"I just wanted to help however I could," he said.

PREVIOUS SPOTLIGHTS:

CCFD Capt. Glenn A. Costello

Inv. Susan Welch

Firefighter Joseph Stukes

EMS Asst. Supervisor Jeremy Evans

Sheriff's Office Victim's Advocate Kim Hill

Paramedic and Firefighter Crystal A. Miller

Firefighter Lawrence "Junior" Odom

Inv. Kenneth Clark:

CCSO Dep. Joseph Brancato

Paramedic Steven Demby Jr.

Firefighter 1 Narongsak "S.J." Saengjunt