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.
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.
Wednesday, August 26th 2009 we responded to Knight’s Eddy, NY to help locate drowning victim HIN HON SIU, age 36, of Jamaica, New York. He had drowned on Sunday, August 23rd. He had been rafting with three friends near the Staircase Rapids when his raft overturned and he did not resurface. Rain has swollen the river on the 23rd making the rapids more dangerous than usual and hampering rescue efforts for the next two days. U.S. Parks Department Officers called me late Tuesday morning and we made arrangements for the next day.
Wednesday was the first day that the river was calm enough to search effectively with divers. The dogs were tasked to search just below the point last seen. If they could pinpoint an area, they could reduce the amount of river bottom that divers needed to search. Three teams from Eagle Valley were deployed: Findling and Stryder, Pardini and Suki, Warren and Quax. A fourth team was deployed from Ramapo Search and Rescue Dogs. All four teams completed their assignments and reported the dogs were alerting in a single area just below the point last seen (PLS). Divers were sent to search that area.
Meanwhile, I put together a second round of assignments. The trickiest part of searching the river is getting the dogs and boats to the places that need to be searched. I enlisted the help of a Pennsylvania Environmental Conservation Officer whose name I can’t remember who has lived his entire life in the area and knew every road, trail and boat landing.
Local Guide and EVDOGS Handler Liz Dalton
Amir Findling came prepared with a complete set of maps for the river from the point where the boat capsized down to Port Jervis. We both thought it likely that the body had already resurfaced and traveled beyond where the main search effort was focused. After sinking to the bottom for a period of time, drowning victims resurface. When they resurface depends upon several factors including the water temperature. The warmer the water, the sooner the victim surfaces. We were looking at a three day interval in August. If the body hadn’t become stuck, wedged in between rocks or debris, it very likely had already surfaced.
We planned to search at least 6 miles from the point last seen. This was both our experience with fast moving water, and was also indicated in Bob Koester’s Lost Person Behavior. 95% of drowning victims on rivers were located within 8 miles of the pls. If I had had more dogs, I would have extended the search area out the full 8 miles. We had three other dogs teams that hadn’t been deployed yet, me and Ripley, Katie Danzig and Scout, and Dick Szczesh and K-9 Buddy from Amigo Search and Rescue Dogs. The three teams that had been out in the morning were also ready for a second assignment. The plan was to search high probability areas–places where a floating body might get stuck on shore or in strainers along the river bank.
Amir came prepared with arial photos of the river
Just as we were getting ready to deploy the second round, a kayaking found him washed up on shore. He was found where we planned to deploy one of our teams–5.6 mile from the PLS, near an access point my guide had identified. I was glad the victim had been found. Diving is always dangerous. Having recently completed a course in lost person behavior, I was also gratified that we’d come up with a good plan.
Delaware River from PLS to where subject was found
What about the dogs who alerted earlier near the point last seen? Divers recovered a shoe positively identified as belonging to the victim exactly where the Ramapo dog indicated. Most likely the dogs were alerting on the shoe and possibly other items belonging to the subject. It is also likely they were alerting on the residual scent left by victim who had been in that spot for at least a day, probably two. Its likely he was under the water Monday and most of Tuesday. Once he had surfaced the journey downstream would not have taken long. His final location was out in the open, clearly visible to any river traffic. I had been on the shore since early that morning. There was no recreational traffic early in the morning. The first rafters started passing our location at Knights Eddy just an hour or so before he was located. The victim was probably seen by the very first kyacker that went past him that day.
Your best chance to find a lost person alive is to make the find as quickly as possible. That means searching in the areas where the person is most likely to be found.
Bob Koester has made this his mission. He is one of the leading experts on the study of lost person behavior and his book by the same title is the new bible.
Bob speaks all over the country. But his fee can be too steep for many agencies. That is why he has started certifying instructors for the Lost Person Behavior course.
I was part of the first class this August. The highlight of the week long training was a day of field instruction. We visited the sites of three different searches in the Blue Ridge mountains to look at initial planning points, decision points and find locations.
In one case, a retired river guide with early stage Alzheimer’s got lost on his return hike from fishing a familiar location. We hiked in about 2 miles to the decision point. Here, Bob is explaining what happened.
If you have the opportunity, seek out the master. Any of the courses he offers will dramatically improve your performance in the field and in management.
If you are interested in having the material presented by me, the full lost person behavior course can be taught in 8 hours and is available for continuing education credits. Shorter presentations and trainings can be designed to meet your agency’s needs. You can email me at rargiros@evdogs.org
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