King-Sized Hero This Elvis Is Still Alive - Kind Of - And Ready To Defuse Deadly Situations

He’s been spotted at a rest stop west of Ritzville, in the parking lot of a Coeur d’Alene health clinic, and, more recently, behind the federal building in downtown Spokane and at the ShopKo in the Spokane Valley.

Elvis sightings are everywhere.

He rolls into deadly situations with the cavalier attitude of the almost-invincible.

Whether it’s a bundle of broomsticks or a lethal pipe bomb, Elvis, the police robot, is prepared to sacrifice his circuitry for the public good.

In his six years of service in the Inland Northwest, Elvis has completed dozens of dicey missions unharmed.

“We always try to use him first,” said Martin O’Leary, a Spokane County sheriff’s detective and bomb technician. “The robot takes a human out of the thing. You could trip and drop (the bomb), and it would go off.”

The Spokane City/County Explosives Disposal Unit gets about 80 calls a year. Elvis participates in 10 to 15 of those calls.

He’s been busy lately.

On Thursday, accessorized with a shotgun, he blew away two suspicious packages at ShopKo. They turned out to be fakes.

Three days earlier, part of downtown Spokane was evacuated because a bomblike device was discovered behind the federal building.

Unaware that it was a fake planted by a pair of teenagers, O’Leary sent Elvis to investigate. The robot is guided by remote control, with the operator watching through Elvis’ video-camera eye.

Elvis rolled up and blew apart a swastika-decorated cluster of broomsticks with a soft lead shell from his shotgun.

The robot was bought after voters approved a $4.3 million law enforcement bond issue in 1988. He was built in Canada and cost $30,000.

When he arrived in Spokane, the bomb squad wanted a light-hearted name to cut through the tension. After scanning the tabloids, they agreed to dub the robot Elvis.

Since then, Elvis has had enough heroic episodes to gain the respect of the bionic “Six Million-Dollar Man.”

Once, as Elvis was taking apart a pipe bomb found in the Spokane Brotherhood of Friends building in 1993, the device exploded in his clawlike hand.

Elvis was unscathed.

“I remember running up to the robot, thinking there’d be a broken lens or something,” O’Leary said. “They’re pretty tough.”

Elvis doesn’t look nearly as tough or cool as his namesake.

In fact, he’s rather squat and gray. His claw extends like the hideous jaws of the movie creature in “Alien.”

He doesn’t dance in the famous Elvis the Pelvis twisting fashion. But he does perform a Michael Jackson-like moonwalk when trying to maneuver into tight corners.

About the only similarities between the bomb squad’s Elvis and the king of rock ‘n’ roll are a nonchalant poise in tense situations and the name, which is painted in glittering, cursive letters on the robot’s camera-box head.

The mechanical Elvis is sometimes unpredictable.

A year ago, Elvis broke down when he was sent to retrieve a stash of bombs in a van parked at the Panhandle Health District parking lot in Coeur d’Alene.

“He was going up to the van, and he stopped taking commands,” recalled Spokane County sheriff’s Deputy Gary Neubauer. “He started doing what he wanted to do.”

Elvis kept going in the wrong direction.

Neubauer had to suit up and retrieve two bombs by hand, while other technicians corralled the robot and made repairs. Elvis carried one bomb to the squad’s containment vessel before he broke down again.

“He has a mind of his own,” Neubauer said.

Early in his career, a Spokane TV station interfered with Elvis’ television signal. Instead of watching where Elvis was going on their video monitor, bomb squad members found themselves watching a home shopping network.

His successes outnumber his breakdowns, however.

Just last summer, Elvis was called in to fetch a bomb from a stolen car found at the Schrag rest stop 20 miles west of Ritzville.

Elvis carefully lifted the gunpowder-filled flashlight and deposited it in a containment vessel, where it was safely detonated.

In an unusual use of the robot, the Spokane police SWAT team called him in to end a standoff in 1993 that started as a domestic violence call.

Police were met at the door by a rifle-wielding Elwood Lee. Officer Ben Estes shot at Lee through the door when Lee shoved his weapon in the chest of Estes’ partner, according to police.

Lee slumped over and the door slammed shut. Unsure whether he was barricading himself in the house, the police broke a sliding glass door and sent in Elvis.

His video eye showed police spare ammunition and, when he rounded a corner, the lifeless body of Lee.

Other Elvis adventures include many false alarms.

In addition to the two recent incidents, Elvis fetched a phony device taped to a stool in a Rogers High School bathroom on April Fools Day 1993, destroyed a fake device left during a robbery of a Washington Mutual Savings Bank a couple months later, and investigated last year’s bomb scare at the General Store on North Division.

Even when his missions fizzle, his efforts are appreciated.

“The first priority is human life,” O’Leary said. “Then property, then evidence.”

Elvis may be expendable, but he’s expensive enough that his handlers hope not to lose him in a blast.

As Neubauer indelicately put it, “He’s a real valuable tool.”

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