Dodge County Sheriff takes pain for a cause

Dodge County Sheriff Scott Rose kept a painful pledge he made a week earlier this past Sunday when he was tased for five seconds.

It all started on Saturday, October 29, when co-workers and friends of county 911 Dispatch Supervisor Dawn Frieberg held a fundraiser at the Hayfield Legion to help offset the costs of Freiberg’s cancer treatments. She was diagnosed earlier this year with breast cancer, had a double mastectomy in June, and now is undergoing five months of chemotherapy.

As the fundraiser was winding down, Deputy Chris Purdue suggested that more money could be raised if Rose would agree to be tased. Rose agreed but with the stipulation that he would be tased if they could raise an additional $5,000 in the remaining 35 minutes of the fundraiser. Rose said Sunday that at the time he felt confident that he was safe because he thought Purdue and fellow deputies would not raise that much money.

Rose was wrong, very wrong. When the fundraiser ended an additional $7,000 had been raised.

Still, a promise is a promise, so Sunday night Rose was again at the Hayfield Legion with a good-sized crowd of friends, deputies, law enforcement, first responders, reporters, and TV camera crews for the event.

Before the tasing, Rose defended agreeing to the challenge because he had no idea the $5,000 minimum would be reached, let alone exceeded.

Being on the wrong side of a tasing is not anything new for today’s law enforcement personnel, Rose said. It is a common part of an officer’s training that they are subjected to tasing. Rose, in fact, was the first taser instructor in Dodge County years ago, he said. All officers who are qualified to carry a taser have to be tased themselves. The difference, Rose said, is that officers have the choice of being tased for one second or two seconds, with most opting for one second.

“I’ve only ever done two seconds because I know how awful it feels,” Rose said. Still, he pointed out, he was willing to do the five seconds because “five seconds with a taser is nothing compared to the five months of chemotherapy Dawn is going through, so it’s worth it.”

Wearing a specially printed t-shirt proclaiming “We Love D” on the front and “You’re Fired,” referring to the Purdue and the other deputies on the back, Rose was ready for the taser.

Frieberg, who said she had never fired a taser, was chosen to pull the trigger, with Rose saying he hoped she remembered to “let go of the trigger” and Purdue offering his assistance.

Still, with two deputies at his side to help steady him, Rose more than held his own.

“That was the longest five seconds of my life,” he said afterwards. He added that he does do a number of fundraisers and has a tendency to go on the edge with some and this one was the most on the edge he had done.

But again, he said, compared to what Frieberg has been going through the tasering was nothing.

Frieberg said afterwards that she still has eight more weeks of chemotherapy to go. As the chemotherapy is becoming more intense and thus impacting her immune system even more, she is basically “going into hibernation” until after the holiday season is over. She and her husband have already decided there will be no Christmas get-togethers this year with their family and they will basically be staying home.

Doctors say it will be six weeks after chemotherapy before she can return to work so she is expecting it will be mid-February before she is back at the Dodge County Sheriff’s Dispatch Center. That is when there will be time to make up for the missed holiday celebrations with their daughter and grandson in the Cities.

As for the fundraiser’s success, the original goal was for $5,000, the total amount raised was over $17,000, Rose said.