Search One Rescue seeks student recruitments
Published in The Sidekick on February 6, 2009
In the Dallas area, there are 33 people who know that when their pagers beep, lives are at stake.
In 1983, Coppell resident, former policeman and part-time EMT Paul Lake gathered six friends, put them through a training program and established Search One Rescue Team as a ground search management organization.
Now, 27 volunteers and 25 canines later, Lake has created one of the most respected search and rescue teams in the nation. For three years, Lake conceptualized the professionally-run search and rescue team that would revolutionize the way missing persons searches were conducted in Texas.
“Twenty five years ago, basically what you saw when somebody was lost was a group of local residents holding hands and walking through the woods looking for somebody, so it was hardly effective,” Lake said. “I saw a need for specialized search and rescue response.”
Because Texas did not have specific search and rescue strategies when Lake first started Search One, the team had to learn from techniques pioneered in the northeast to handle extreme terrain and wilderness and adapt them to the Texas environment, where searches are conducted in urban areas 70 percent of the time.
“In the early days, it was kind of hard to provide that service to agencies, because a lot of [agencies] felt they could do it on their own,” Lake said.
Most agencies nowcall within the first 30 minutes of a search being determined, which ensures that the scents are at their strongest so that the unit can establish a search perimeter, divide up the sectors into manageable parts and begin to scout the area for any traces of the missing person.
“We want to make sure that if that person’s out there, we find them,” four-year member Nora Collins said. “We still get nervous, because the last thing in the world that we want is for the person to be there and we’ve overlooked them.”
Training is thorough, with half a year of basic training and another 12 to 18 months to train a search dog. The team’s various canines, divided into trailing dogs, air scent dogs, human remains dogs and disaster dogs, are an invaluable asset to the team. With over 125 to 220 million smell sensitive cells on an area the size of a handkerchief and an olfactory bulb that deals with the perception of sell 40 times larger than that of humans, the dogs of Search One are both rigorously trained and fun-loving. Members teach search dogs to realize one cause and-effect mantra: find the person, get a toy.
“There are two ways to train a dog,” Lake said. “One is to train him to do what he’s supposed to do because he knows what’s going to happen to him if he doesn’t, or you can train him to do what he’s supposed to do because he knows there’s going to be a party at the end of it. We chose to do the positive way.”
Since its inception, Search One has offered its services in search and rescue operations at both many of the country’s major disasters, including the Columbia shuttle recovery and Hurricanes Katrina and Ike, and in small communities such as Coppell. They have worked with over 120 law enforcement agencies, including the FBI.
In one incident a few summers ago, an Alzheimer’s patient from Arlington wandered away from his car on the highway. County law enforcement ground and helicopter searches turned up with nothing, and each hour that withered away under the burning Texas sun seemed to spell out a grimmer outcome for the elderly man.
When Search One was called out the next morning, Lake’s black labrador Shadow found the dehydrated and deilrious man a few hours from death tucked away in a drain culvert underneath the highway. After being taken to the hospital, he was reunited with his family within hours.
“It’s definitely an adrenaline rush when we’re successful,” five-year member Larry Troy said. “We know that we’re saving lives.”
Sometimes, however, the situation isn’t so lucky, and Search One members have to deal with the emotional hardships that come with the job and the price for closure.
Over a decade ago, Lake’s first search dog found a 3-year-old who had been bludgeoned to death by his mother’s estranged boyfriend and dumped in the woods around Forth Worth.
The search was highly-publicized, with the neighborhood lined up along the bank looking down into the creek area, which police and fire departments had flooded with light in “a football stadium environment, almost,” as Lake described it.
“I saw [my dog’s] behavior change and I knew he made the find,” Lake said. “I went in to verify that the subject was not alive, and came back out. Now, what am I supposed to do with my dog? He has to have a positive experience now, or he won’t do this anymore.
“So I have to reward my dog. I have to play with my dog, with the family and everybody and their brother on this field watching us, after I’ve just found this little boy. You don’t want to have to do that, you’re not happy, it’s not a happy situation.”
Search One Rescue Team is volunteer-based and welcomes all prospective members to visit the team’s training sessions, which the team holds every Sunday afternoon in various locations across the Metroplex.
After two visits, people and students who are serious may undergo the demanding, two-year training program. Others simply wishing to see the team can volunteer to assist in the training sessions.
