By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 29, 2006; A08

SUGAR HILL, N.H. -- As they read the news, Jennifer Gaudette felt queasy, Dick Bielefield cursed and Doug Glover felt "pretty much instant depression."

The news was from Washington, where Sugar Hill's police chief had contracted an infection in his hospital bed. Badly injured by shrapnel while on National Guard duty in Iraq, he had a fever and dangerous swelling in his brain, according to a Web log, or blog, run by the chief's sister. In a few hours, everybody here knew about it.

This is the way wounded troops and their home towns connect now: Letters, phone calls and gossip have been supplanted, in many cases, by Web sites that chronicle patients' every surgery, setback and squeeze of someone's hand.

For the past two months, Sugar Hill has learned how good, and how painful, it is to be that close.

"I think it plays with your emotions. I don't see how it can't," said Bielefield, a selectman who had helped hire Chief Jose Pequeño in 2001. "Sometimes, you wonder if you know too much."

Pequeño, 32, was born in New Orleans to Puerto Rican and Cuban parents, but he grew up mainly in the north country of New Hampshire.

A former Marine, his first brush with local notoriety came 10 years ago, when he dived through the "Lemon Squeezer," a 16-inch-wide gap in rocks, to save an infant from drowning in the Lost River.

In 2001, he became both the chief and the sole officer in Sugar Hill, population about 590, a town of country inns and shaggy cows.

"Your biggest call of the day might be a horse in the road," said Gaudette, the town's administrative assistant.

As befits a man who was his own backup, Pequeño was said to have an easy way with people here. He gave a lot of warnings to speeders, remembered the home alarm codes of residents who forgot them, and corralled a lot of livestock. His wife, Kelley Pequeño, remembered one famous loose-horse call in which Pequeño started crooning over the police radio, "I should have been a cowboy."

Before his military police unit left for Iraq in spring 2005, the dispatcher told Pequeño that his fellow officer -- another had been hired to assist him -- was in a fight at the local meeting house. The chief roared over and found a surprise going-away party instead.

"He just cried" when he walked in, his wife said.

Pequeño was expected to return from Iraq later this year. But on March 1, insurgents attacked his Humvee in the Iraqi city of Ramadi. A Vermont guardsman was killed, a New Hampshire soldier was injured and Pequeño suffered a devastating wound to the back left side of his head.

At first, Sugar Hill learned about this injury in the piecemeal way that home towns have always learned such news, from phone calls and news reports and word of mouth. Even those closest to him weren't sure exactly how bad things were.

Soon, though, residents knew a lot.

"Blood pressure of 120 and a heart rate of 80, he's holding strong," read a blog entry written by Elizabeth Bagley, Pequeño's sister, about a day after the injury. "What remained unsettling to the doctors was the lack of response that they were receiving from Jose through multiple tests."

Even before Pequeño had arrived in the United States, beginning a treatment that would take him to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda and then Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the District, his family had set up a Web page at http://www.caringbridge.org . The organization, which was started to help families of medical patients communicate with friends and family, now estimates it has 145 sites related to troops injured in Iraq or Afghanistan. Pequeño's is http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/josepequeno .

"CaringBridge lets you tell the story once, and everybody gets the same story in the same way," said the site's founder, Sona Mehring. Similar blogs have also been set up at other Web sites.

Over the past two months, Pequeño's story has been of slow recuperation from an injury that left him in a coma, unable move much of his body or speak.

On April 21, his page was updated with the good news that Pequeño was squeezing someone's hand: "Which is a step we have all been waiting for! YAY!" Bagley wrote.

In the town hall, Gaudette said, employees excitedly passed the word: "He's squeezing."

Then came bad days at the end of April, when Pequeño was hit by the infection. "Late Friday night Jose started with a fever and the swelling in his brain began to increase. Throughout the day Saturday he was fighting even harder," the blog said on April 30.

"All of a sudden, when we've been making -- when he's been making steady progress, whoof," said Sugar Hill resident Rose Ellms. "It's like somebody's knocked your knees out from under you." The chief has improved since, though his wife said he remains in intensive care.

Communication goes the other way, too: Pequeño's blog has logged more than 1,200 postings from readers. There are prayers, poems, an eyewitness account of the battle in which he was injured and accounts of "Chief Jose" -- a cow named in his honor by Ellms's 3-year-old daughter.

A lot of it, though, is everyday details about Pequeño's three school-age children and the area he left behind. The weather, northern New Hampshire's most talked-about current event, comes up again and again: "they're saying the Berlin area may get as much as a foot of snow today through Wed.," one person wrote on April 4.

Kelley Pequeño reads the home page every day and gives her husband a summary of what everyone's said. "He'll look away," she said. "That's his way of responding right now."

All this communication has meant publicity for the town's efforts to help Pequeño's family. There was a bake sale, which raised at least $3,000, and a spaghetti dinner and auction that brought in more than $25,000. Allan Clark, the fire chief, is leading an effort to build Pequeño a new, wheelchair-accessible house.

Pequeño's injuries have also changed some attitudes here about the U.S. role in Iraq.

"Why doesn't George W. just declare victory?" said Glover, the town's "road agent" in charge of maintaining streets, who cries when talking about the chief. "Why doesn't he stop this? This is ridiculous."

The kind of emotional swings that Pequeño's case has brought here used to be reserved only for a service member's closest family. But people in Sugar Hill say they much prefer this to the alternative.

"There's a lot of people up here in the north country that are pulling for him," said Susan Cunningham, who has posted messages from Lisbon, N.H. "And there's nothing worse than not knowing what's going on with him."