To say Angela Boyers has come a long way from growing up in Van Buren might be just a bit of an understatement.
Boyers, a 1997 graduate of Van Buren High School and alumna of Three Rivers College, has served as the chief ranger at Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona since 2021. More than that, she is the first woman to serve as the park’s top law enforcement officer.
“It’s pretty exciting to be the first female chief ranger at this iconic park,” Boyers said. “And at the time that I got this park, it was really interesting to see, because I was here, Erika Jostad was chief ranger at Grand Teton, Sarah Davis was at Yellowstone and Lisa Hendy was the chief at Great Smoky Mountain.
“So four of the icon parks were all being led by female chief rangers …
“It was breaking ceilings, because it just had never happened before at those parks. None of those positions had ever been held by a female.”
As Grand Canyon’s chief ranger, Boyers oversees law enforcement at the park, preventative search and rescue, search and rescue, emergency services, structure fire, wildland fire and aviation — and the park’s permitting systems.
“So if you want a permit to go on the river or if you want a permit to go into the backcountry, that’s also underneath my purview,” Boyers said.
Daily med-evacs
Boyers said “there’s always something going on” at Grand Canyon, including multiple med-evacs out of the canyon each day.
“We are an extremely busy park, we have a very active emergency services, aviation and law enforcement program,” Boyers said. “The stats would just baffle you at what we deal with yearly — and honestly, daily.”
However, Boyers said her job also comes with a lot of positives.
“It is a beast of an operation, but it is so rewarding because we have so many passionate people and we are truly the front lines,” Boyers said. “When people come to visit Grand Canyon, it’s my staff they see, whether it’s at the entrance station or the campground — or sadly, the emergency services response.
“We are the ones that are usually the first and only to interact with the visitors — and my staff takes that very seriously. They’re all very passionate about their job and it’s so fun to see how passionate they are — and that they truly care about not only the visitors but the resources as well.”
Before Boyers became chief ranger at Grand Canyon, she was deputy chief ranger at Yosemite National Park in California and also was the chief ranger for six years at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, which sits on the Utah-Arizona border.
Eight years at Grand Canyon
Boyers also worked six years as a ranger at Grand Canyon, so she has spent a total of eight years at the iconic park.
During her two stints at Grand Canyon, several incidents have stood out to Boyers.
“My first go-around here, I ended up doing CPR on one of my co-worker’s spouses and we actually saved her — we got her back and she’s still alive today,” Boyers said. “And so she has gotten to see her kids grow up. Her youngest is getting ready to graduate high school. And that is honestly a huge boon.”
There also have been some tragedies. During her first stint as a ranger at Grand Canyon, Boyers recalls a family visiting from nearby Air Force base which had a 5-year-old daughter. The girl was playing on the rim despite warnings from her family and accidentally fell to her death.
“There are things like that, that you’re like ‘oh my gosh, it’s just devastating,’” Boyers said. “Their lives are forever changed and of course their view of Grand Canyon National Park is forever changed.”
Then there have been incidents that were just interesting.
“It was New Year’s Eve and I went to make a traffic stop,” Boyers said. “He was leaving the bar and I went to stop him for running a stop sign — and he took off. I ended up in a high-speed pursuit for several miles and he ended up trying to swerve my patrol car off the road a couple of times. We got out to an area that was really icy, so we terminated pursuit but still continued to follow him.
“We got out to a place that we call Thor’s Hammer and he pulled in, flung open the door and jumped over the side. However, he ended up choosing a poor place to jump over and he rolled, tumbled and slid about 450 feet down and we found him alive holding on to a tree.”
It was later revealed the man had mental health issues and originally wished to commit suicide, but Boyers and the rangers ultimately were able to save him and he ended up getting treatment.
“We have more saves than we have losses, so that’s always a great thing,” Boyers said. “There are so many stories, it’s hard to pick which one. I know here at this park, we’ve had some pretty crazy and outlandish things happen. And when I tell people some of these stories, they think I’m embellishing and I’m like, you can’t make this stuff up. These things really happen.”
Carter County roots
Boyers’ journey from Carter County to Grand Canyon actually began right after she graduated from Van Buren High School in 1997. She got a job as a seasonal admin clerk at the Ozark National Scenic Riverways, which is administered by the National Park Service.
“Up until that point, I knew about the park service only because I grew up around it,” Boyers said. “But I didn’t really know the park service and I worked that summer and I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is what I want to do.’”
Boyers majored in criminal justice at Three Rivers College — and later Southeast Missouri State University — and even was a member of TRC’s cheerleading squad her freshman year. But in the summer when school was out, she worked for the park service, first at the ONSR and later at Buffalo River in Arkansas.
From there, Boyers headed to the Park Ranger Law Enforcement Academy Training Program in North Carolina, then got a job working at Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts.
“I got offered what they call a SCEP, or a Student Career Employment Program,” Boyers said. “And so basically the rest of the time that I was in college, I was actually still working for the park service for a while — but I was also in college earning my degree.
“And so I transferred from TRCC over to SEMO. Every time I’d have a break, whether it was Christmas break or summer break, I would make the trip back to Cape Cod because that was my home park.”
Boyers also spent three years at Yellowstone National Park after her first stint at Grand Canyon.
“The winters are really hard. You’ve got to like snow — a lot,” Boyers said. “I did three winters in the interior (at Yellowstone), where you’re snowmobiling in and out to get to your house and get groceries. By the third winter, I was like, ‘I don’t know if this is the right fit for me.’ And so I ended up transferring out. The winters are just really hard. Beautiful place — but you’ve got to really, really like snow.”
So, just how extreme is the snow at Yellowstone in the winter?
“I don’t want to have to wear an avalanche beacon while shoveling out my driveway,” Boyers said. “The roofs were pitched to a point to get the snow to break and slide off so that you didn’t have to worry about roof collapse. But whenever you were shoveling your sidewalks or just out to your snowmobile, you would have to wear it to still be on the safe side because there were so much snow that would come down.”
A rewarding career
While being Grand Canyon’s first female chief ranger has had a few challenges, the rewards far outweigh any drawbacks.
“I love it,” Boyers said. “It’s been amazing and I love the fact that I actually get to be that role model for women, especially young women coming into the agency. When I joined the agency, I was hired because I was a minority. I was a female in law enforcement and they just didn’t have that many women in law enforcement.
“And so now, 23 years later, I’m the chief ranger at Grand Canyon. So we’ve come a long way. We’ve still got a lot more work to do, but we’ve come a long way. ... It makes me excited for the next generation coming up behind me.”