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| 11/28/2009 6:00:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article |
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COURTESY PHOTO
Dolores K-9 Search and Rescue Team members and dogs have participated in searches in 11 states. |
| | For more ino | • Visit the K-9 Search & Rescue Team's Web site at www.k9team.org. Learn more about the 1st Special Response Group at www.1SRG.org.
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Dolores K-9 Team celebrates 25th anniversary
TJ Holmes
Dolores Star Editor
This year, the Dolores K-9 Search and Rescue Team celebrated 25 years of "finding the lost and missing."
Founding members put the team together by teaching themselves what they needed to know to find people missing in difficult terrain, and learning seems to be a common theme throughout their two and a half decades of existence.
The team has its origins with the 1984 search for a 14-year-old boy in the Fish Creek area. A dog and handler were brought in from another part of Colorado, but they couldn't handle the difficult local terrain. People involved with that search started researching what it would take to create a local K-9 team and found the American Rescue Dog Association in New Mexico.
Team Commander Chuck Melvin didn't start on the team as a handler; he started as base support. He had been a member of the team two or three years before he got his first dog - "after a lot of the New Mexico (ARDA) seminars." His current dog, Axel, is his fourth search dog.
One requirement of ARDA was for German shepherds, but since the team has split from that organization, they welcome other breeds.
"We researched organizations, and we found ARDA in New Mexico," he said last month during a look back at the team's history. "Most of the dog training business is really training the handler to recognize what the dog's going to do."
The best search dogs have a high play and prey drive, Melvin said.
"These are the dogs that don't make very good pets; put a shepherd with a high drive in your backyard, and he'll tear it up," he said.
The team has five dog/handler partners now, and three people, including another high school student, have expressed interest.
The average experience level of current team members right now is about five years, and the average working career of a SAR dog is about eight to nine years.
Melvin said it takes about 600 hours to train a dog and about 400 to train the handler to read what the dog is doing.
The team is a member of the National Association of Search and Rescue, the Colorado Search and Rescue Board and the New Mexico Search and Rescue Council, as well as a division of the Dolores Fire Department since about 1990. Melvin, who lives on the Colorado Centennial Farm his grandfather homesteaded, was a firefighter and helped start the rescue service in the 1970s. He was recently invited to be a member of the 1st Special Response Group, an international search and rescue team.
"We work pretty close with the fire department," he said. "They're our neighbors; we do a lot of joint training."
The Dog House is just west of the fire station, and the groups partner on some training sessions, like CPR.
"Without the support of our employers and the community, we couldn't exist," Melvin said. "That's vital to these volunteer organizations. It's no different than with the fire department; we sure couldn't go if the boss didn't let us."
Melvin has been a science teacher at Dolores for 41 years. At least one of his current team members is a former student, and one is a sophomore in Melvin's emergency science class.
The team traditionally averages about 30 searches per year; as of October this year, they've been on 12 missions. The increased use of cell phones has shifted most missions from search loads to rescue loads, Melvin said.
"A person gets in trouble, and if he has GPS and a cell phone, we don't have to find him, we just have to go get him," he said. "The exceptions are children and dementia patients."
Dolores K-9 Team member Kimberly Kelly recently earned an international award for her search and rescue work with dementia and Alzheimer's patients.
Kelly, who lives in California, met Melvin and some members of the team when she went to New Mexico in 1997 to teach a program she created focused on finding missing Alzheimer's patients during the state conference that year.
After that, Melvin brought her to Colorado to do some teaching here, and after returning three or four times and being impressed by the caliber of team members and everyone involved, she commented that it was a shame the team didn't allow people from out of state to join.
"He looked at me and said 'Why not?'" she said. "They've been stuck with me ever since."
Kelly has been involved with search and rescue since 1993. She was riding as part of a women's mounted stunt team at rodeos. A flier from the local sheriff's office announcing a need for mounted officers caught her eye.
Friends told her she would never make it, "but the fastest way to get me to do something is tell me it can't be done," she said. "It was the best thing I ever did."
Her father and ex-husband were involved with search and rescue, and her children, 9, 10 and 12, "think it's the coolest thing ever." Kelly joined an international search and rescue team in 2005 and is now commander of that team: 1st Special Response Group. She doesn't have a horse now, but with her cadaver dog, she can deploy anywhere. Her area of specialty is working forensic remains and detection and finding missing Alzheimer's patients. She received an award from the Richard Pampuri Catholic order that provides health care services to poor and indigent for a DVD series she did this year on that subject.
Melvin, in his last year of teaching, doesn't seem to have any plans of slowing down. Axel "is a good dog, and until he has to retire, I will certainly stay with it." It could be said that Melvin's teaching drive is as strong as Axel's play drive; he plans to continue teaching at SAR conferences, "meeting folks from other places and seeing how they do things and stealing ideas we can use."
Melvin was recently accepted to Kelly's Special Response Group in California, an international SAR group. He was attracted to that group because of the training they provide for organizations in other countries.
"That's of interest to me; if we can help someone get started, so they wouldn't make all the mistakes we made, that would be pretty cool stuff."
The Dolores K-9 team is unique in several ways.
"We have support people, we have a base camp, and we support each other in ways we never could have with a single dog and handler; that's a real strong point for our group," Melvin said.
The team's acquisition of equipment over the years also has set it apart. The team is equipped to be self-sustaining on missions up to seven days with the nine-passenger bus and five dog kennels.
"We're the only group in the nation that has the remodeled school bus; we've had people say we're the best-equipped," he said.
All members are volunteers, and the team's only fundraising effort each year is the pancake breakfast the Saturday morning of Escalante Days each August. They also get some grant funding and donations. On missions, "the only thing we ever ask for is fuel" from the law-enforcement or other search agencies that request Dolores' help.
Shawn Everett is a three-year veteran on the Dolores K-9 Search and Rescue Team, and Dolores High School sophomore Cody Zornacki joined Sept. 18, the day he turned 16. Everett and Zornacki share a common background: Mr. Melvin was and is their science teacher.
Everett is a navigator for the handler-dog pairs, and his duties include communication and mapping, as well as running the base camp if needed. As he explains it, "I handle radio communication so (the handler) can keep their eyes on the dog."
He started thinking about joining the team when he was in high school - like Zornacki - and thought it would be fun to work with the dogs "and at the same time maybe save a life here and there."
During his three years on the team, he has been on about 20 missions; six in the past year.
Everett described the team as a supportive family - "if you need help with anything, they're there for you; that's the best part of the team" - and said he learns something new on every mission. His advice for people thinking about joining the team is to be willing to do and learn whatever is asked.
"You always feel like you're doing something productive ... it's just a great thing if you really want to get into it," he said. "They should ask themselves: Do you want to get up at 2 or 4 in the morning when the godawful pager goes off and walk around in a blizzard? If they're willing to work hard - they have to be - it's the best thing in the world."
Zornacki said he joined the team for "lots of reasons."
"It's a good learning experience," he said. "I wanted to help people."
Zornacki is an archer who knows his way around the woods and said he was already familiar with navigation skills when he joined the team. It might come as no surprise that his favorite class at DHS is emergency science, taught by Melvin. The class covers first-response skills - Zornacki just got his CPR certification - wildland firefighting and search and rescue. In his first month with the team, Zornacki was involved in two missions, including the search for member Kae Skala, who died Oct. 3 during a hike. That was hard, he said.
Sixteen is the minimum age to join the team, Zornacki and Melvin said.
"Navigator sounds fun ... I'm happy with it all," he said. "If they tell me to run the radio, I run the radio. I like it all."
Kelly recently picked Melvin and Axel to Costa Rica to assist in a search for a missing British journalist. They were the right choice, she said, based on their ability to work in difficult terrain, ignore distractions and for their live-find and cadaver skills.
Thirty to 35 people are members of the 1st Special Response Group, Kelly said. One of the reasons Melvin was picked to go to Costa Rica is his disarming, friendly personality. "Chuck is a great resource, and I can't wait to send him out again," she said.
All the members stress the feeling they get from helping people. Melvin said he doesn't like open cases of missing people because he can't bring closure to the families.
"A lot of folks think we're weird in that we don't get upset about finding deceased patients," Melvin said. "When we have open missions, the team doesn't have closure, and family doesn't have closure."
"It's a great thing if you want to feel like you're doing something 100 percent productive and if you really like helping people," Everett said. "It's the perfect thing.
"It takes your entire heart and makes it that much bigger ... It's an experience that can't be 100 percent explained by words."
Members of the Dolores K-9 Search and Rescue team are Chuck Melvin, James Melvin, Vicki Ayers, Robert Laymon, Wayne Harrison, Randy Bouet, Amy Melvin, Donnetta Bowen, Lynda Bouet, Vicki Coss, Kim Jones, Marcus Appleton, Kimberly Kelly, Shawn Everett, Brad Finch and Cody Zornacki.
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