In July 2010 it came to the attention of the team that there was missing woman from Herkimer who has been missing since Aug 2009.
We were requested by the family to help look for their missing sister, Lisa. This became a joint effort between Eagle Valley Search Dogs and New Jersey Search and Rescue.
The search date was set for Aug 28th. Karen Pardini and I arrive the day before to meet with the family and discuss some strategies and walk the area of PLS (point last seen).
Saturday morning all dogs and teams arrive at staging, are given assignments and off they go. There are three teams in the field, I stay back with Scout until needed and Karen stays to run communications.
Approximately three hours later Karen gets a radio communication from Task 3 which is Sue Lavoie and her dog Summer along with Bob Langendoen both from New Jersey Search and Rescue, they will notify Karen via land line.
The call comes and Karen gives a thumb up. Sue Lavoie and her dog Summer have made the find, this is what we train for!
I contact the State Police and the family. They have been waiting for a year living with interrupted grieving, now they can go forward and have closure. The family arrives. It’s a bitter-sweet emotional moment for everyone. This “cold case” comes alive, Lisa Bowolak is no longer just a name and a picture stapled to a telephone pole. She is a woman with family, friends, and ties to a community.
Congratulations to Sue Lavoie and her dog Summer and to all that participated.
May 26, 2010 10 AM: Today is test day at the Southern Tier Police Canine Association 2010 Police Cadaver Dog seminar. If we pass, Raven and Ripley will be certified Police Cadaver Dogs through the Eastern Police Canine Association. This is Ripley’s 5th time through the process. We re-certify every year. Raven, my 2-year-old, is taking the test for the first time. Several other dog teams are testing today as well including Dick Szczesh and Amanda Scarpato from Amigo Search and Rescue along with their golden retrievers Buddy and Libby.
We have trained and prepared for what is ahead. Still I feel pre-exam nerves. When I got up this morning, I thought “Why am I doing this? I took vacation days to torture myself. ” The truth is my idea of a good time involves putting myself to the test. My guts are roiling. Breathe…..4 counts in, hold for 4, 4 counts out, hold for 4…repeat.. OK. that’s a little better. Pre-frontal cortex is back in the driver’s seat. My reptile brain is still sending out waves of stress but now it feels more like excitement than panic.
4 PM. We made it through all the tests. Both dogs passed. In fact, they did great. Tests are usually set up so that an average dog on an average day has a good chance of passing. They aren’t supposed to be tricky. Still, the buried hide was interesting and allowed the girls to show off a little.
We had an acre area mixed wood and field with a substantial incline. The parking area was on the top. There was a small drainage on one side, and a road on the other. Grass turned to dirt at the bottom of the area.
Sun's energy creates scent cone in opposite direction from the prevailing wind
My plan had been to work from the stream toward the road using the wind. But as I walked toward the evaluator to explain the plan to him, Raven had a head pop. Scrapping the plan I had just outlined I let her go. The sun’s energy heated the dark road surface, pulling the cool air out of the copse of trees creating a little micro current opposite the direction of the wind and a beautiful scent cone for Raven to work. The problem took less than 3 minutes.
The day was miserably hot and humid. To spare the dogs we worked each dog through a single scenario before moving on to the next. The dogs had time to rest and cool off. But I found the waiting a challenge. My ability to channel stress diminishing with each trial. By the last test, the vehicle search, I was sending tension like an electric charge down the lead to Raven. It wasn’t terrible; we did fine, but Dan Wilcox noticed, and that was disappointing. My goal is to keep up appearances from start to finish. We are making progress. Five years ago, at my first EPCA trial, I looked like a wreck the entire time.
Dan Wilcox EPCA Judge Ripley indicating on buried training aid
The truth is I am confident and competent. I know how hard and how often we train. I am good at reading my dogs and I am accurate in my assessments–cataloging our strengths and weaknesses realistically. That is the image I want to present. At the therapeutic boarding school I work at, nobody confuses expressions of doubt with lack of competence. But when I am hanging out with cops, the rules are different. If I want them to see the truth, I need to lie. To present as the confident and competent person I am, I need to keep any and all misgivings to myself. More than anything, for me, taking these tests is my way of working on my persona as a dog handler. So I will go back next year and try again. Maybe mirrored shades will help…..
Rip and Raven are certified in Human remains detection by both civilian and law enforcement organizations. They re-certify every year.
If you follow this blog you know our most experienced member is Amir Findling. As a member of First Special Response Group (1SRG) he has made a number of international deployments. I recently e-mailed him and asked if he had any plans to go to Haiti. Here is his response.
Hi Rita:
Tonight I got a call from Rabbi Isaac Leider whom I know from previous searches in Canada and California and he asked me to go and help on the recovery of a Jewish person missing in PAP. I told him that I could not go without the needed logistical support, as nothing is for sale or hire on the island. … But I was asked to do a phone interview of the last person that saw Alex Bitton, the missing person, at the hotel where they were staying. I then wrote it up in a report, translated it to Hebrew so that the Israeli team who is on location will be able to understand the information without needing to use whatever English they can muster. …. Just want to keep you in the loop.
Amir
P.S. Jewish people pay a lot of respect to the dead and the way things are going in Haiti, well they have an urgent need to find that person before the body disappears in a mass grave or is just plain burned. That’s why I got that request from Isaac.
Here is an email our saftey officer, Karen Pardini, just sent out to the team. Karen has a medical background and has served in various capacities at Katrina,in Africa and Haiti.
Text 501501 to donate $5 for earthquake relief .You can also donate directly at www.yele.org
Hi Team,
I’ve been working straight out with Yele Haiti since I heard from (our) Kate that there was this huge earthquake! Yele is the group I worked with in Haiti and NYC in the past years.
This morning with a ten-minute warning I ended up on a conference call with the NYC Mayor’s office, FEDEX and the Yele team. This relief mission is unfolding and changing with the speed of light. OPS and LOGS take on a whole new meaning!
We have FEDEX donating two planes and 3 FEDEX collection sites (NYC, Brooklyn and “Little Haiti “in Miami m)on this Saturday. The Coast Guard is flying our medical supplies on Saturday, then a FEDEX plane leaving early next week and another later in the week, both will be loaded with the basic need supplies.
As of now the needs are simple, sheets for shrouds, blankets for the nights, utility candles, energy bars and wind-up/solar flashlights and radios (no batteries).
FEDEX has been generous; Cliff Bars donated 100,000 bars, Timberland one of our sponsors working on donating.
I’m organizing the NYC sight for drop off in the form of “trouble shooting” the site in the moment. I have 100 birth kits arriving plus disposable sheets. Also looking for medical supplies for women’s healthcare. Midwifery teams are poised to go but finding seats on a plane just impossible, private planes are the only way at this point. Wyclef, who started Yele Haiti, rented a plane as soon as the quake hit from the Dominican Republic then left NY after the CNN interview with Anderson Cooper. It took him all day to get into the arena.
The air arrival list for supply planes is becoming longer every hour, hence the days for getting the supplies in are lengthening. FEDEX has been great and as you can imagine so organized. I’m working with Airline Ambassadors, a group of volunteers who I’ve worked with in the past, and they are ready for any work, totally professional.
There are only daylight landings in Port au Prince and the tower is not very functional, Someone waves from the ground to the tower and those in the tower radio to have the pilot look for the person on the ground…crazy!
Yele raised 1 million dollars as of late today through our text donation of $5. To 501501. If nothing else please check out yele.org. we’re working so hard for the people of Haiti,
If I were to have my preference (as if I had a choice) I’d work in Jacmel on the other side of the island. I know the area better… it’s a smaller sea town. The word from people I know is that Jacmel also pan-caked and is on the ground. On a good day the 25 mile road takes about 6 hours or more. Now a rhino can’t even pass. The Jacmel landing field is for only small planes and helicopters, not even sure it’s functional.
Four of us decided to celebrate the new year with a weekend of training. Katie Danzig, Karen Pardini, and Sarah Sherburne spent the better part of Saturday and Sunday, January 2nd and 3rd, with me at the Family Foundation School, along with all of our dogs: Abby and Raven, Ripley, Scout, Katya and Suki. Oh, and don’t forget Lily, our beagle. She’s not part of the team but she keeps the other, bigger dogs in line. We also watched Buddy Meyer’s dog, Max, for the weekend. Altogether that’s eight dogs, four handlers and one husband, mine–Sid Parham.
Truth be told, much of the weekend went to dog walking and dog obedience. With three German shepherds, two Dobermans, and Mallanios there were lots of little ranking issues to deal with; but nothing a five-minute down stay couldn’t handle.
Karen rewards Suki after she makes a building find
Abby and Raven squabbled just like the two sisters they are. They also have a wonderful time playing with each other. But there were a few times when their exuberance got out of hand so we cooled things down with a few time-outs. I don’t think there was a single second of actual canine aggression. But SAR dog handlers need to respect the sensibilities of the average person. Civilians are put off by dogs growling at each other–even when it’s perfectly normal doggy communication.
Lily’s little and it’s a good thing. If she weighs much of the shepherds she’d be the alpha bitch. As it was we caught her trying to dominate the Mallanios, Max. I can’t figure out any G-Rated way to explain what she was doing to him.
The new year brought our first serious winter weather. Snow on the ground. Snow falling. Bitterly cold temperatures with a significant wind chill. Large area search problems were out of the question. So we decided to focus on snow burial, HRD, and a little navigation.
Matt dressed for the weather
Two students from the Family Foundation School, Jens and Matt, prepared the sites for the snow burial problems and acted as subjects. They had a ball playing in the snow. Our two youngest dogs Abby and Raven, had no difficulty finding them.
Jens after a hard day in the snow
We spent the rest of the weekend indoors as much as possible using an unfinished building to train in human remains detection.
Katie and Karen took lots of pictures. Here’s a great sequence of Abby doing her first Snow burial.
