BFHS grad honors parents, receives BPSA scholarship
Kelly and Reece Bell, Stuart and Reece Bell (Photos courtesy of Reece Bell)
BONNERS FERRY — The Border Patrol Supervisors’ Association motto, “Patronus Nostros” — “We take care of our own” — is something that 2018 BFHS graduate Reece Bell grew up with. After all, his father has worked as a Border Patrol agent since he was a small child. Now, as a BPSA scholarship recipient, Bell has his sights set on following in the footsteps of his father.
Border Patrol wasn’t his original plan. Bell wanted to become a physical therapist after sustaining injuries that required him to go through PT himself. “I had […] many injuries. After I […] finished physical therapy, I felt as if I were back to normal or had never had the injury at all.”
Yet, after a job shadow, he knew PT wasn’t for him.
Bell credits his parents, Stuart and Kelly Bell, for providing the guidance he needed throughout his life. “They have genuinely been the best parents I could have asked for and I remind myself of that every single day.”
A senior at Boise State University, Bell is studying psychology. He believes it will help him understand people and why they do the things they do, better arming him to help people as a Border Patrol agent.
Along with his major, Bell said he hopes to use the lessons his father learned as a Border Patrol agent, lessons Bell highlighted in the project he submitted to the BPSA in his scholarship application.
The first was to treat people with respect. “If you don’t treat people with respect, they’re not going to treat you with respect,” Bell said.
The next was “the importance of hard work.” Bell emphasized that “if you really want something that bad, you have to be willing to outwork everybody else chasing the same thing.”
He also highlighted the importance of integrity, saying his father taught him that “a person without integrity can never be fully trusted or be a true leader.”
Bell also noted that his father always put his family before himself, a lesson of sacrifice he still remembers.
He also included optimism in those life lessons. “A negative mindset will only hinder success,” Bell said in his project, but “optimism can help people pull through during the toughest of times.”
Finally, Bell talked about self-confidence, saying it was “especially important when no one else believes in you and it can be the one thing that can be the difference between success and failure.”
While Bell talked a lot about his father in his BPSA scholarship project, he is quick to say that his mother “has been very […] helpful in helping me choose what would be the best next step in my life […] and I love her more than words can express.”
Part of the goal of the project submitted to the BPSA was to show what “the U.S. Border Patrol could do to build stronger ties with the community.”
Bell believes that Border Patrol could create a program of mandatory volunteer hours for each agent, citing schools, homeless shelters, nursing homes and cleanup crews as examples of ways agents could volunteer and get out into their communities.
He also used his education in psychology to point out that the Border Patrol could strengthen ties by ensuring agents are relatable to community members.
“I believe that many people view law enforcement agents as robots and inhuman,” Bell said. “If agents could do their absolute best to be personable […] it could lead to a much better relationship between the Border Patrol and the community.”
Border Patrol has done an “exemplary job of keeping communities safer,” Bell said, citing their statistics for the 2020 fiscal year. In 2020, the agency seized 828,658 pounds of drugs, apprehended 363 gang members and conducted 5,071 life-saving rescues of people in a variety of circumstances at the southwestern border.
Bell’s project clearly resonated with the BPSA as he is one of only 10 students nationwide who received a 2021 BPSA scholarship. “You represent the future leadership of our society,” reads the final line on the awards page of the BPSA website.
Bell might not think of himself that way, but he does believe that becoming a Border Patrol agent “will be tough […] in the end it [will] assist me in becoming the absolute best version of myself possible.”