By Max Khaytsus, Rampart Search and Rescue
It’s midnight and the pager goes off. We don’t actually carry pagers anymore. It’s an app on the smartphone. Four quick beeps, like an audible strobe. I may have been asleep for two hours, minus the tossing and turning it takes to get there. With my head still buried in the pillow, I grope for my phone in the dark. I could use another six hours of sleep. I’m appreciative of the phone’s considerate night mode and the dim glow of the lettering.
Missing 63YOM. Cognitive issues.
Normal people sleep at this time. It’s a weeknight and I have to be at work at 6 AM, but unlike normal people at this hour, I’m pulling on my pants and attempting to get a clean shirt out of the pile of freshly washed clothes in the laundry basket. There’s a shield logo on the left chest and heavy white lettering on the back.
RAMPART
SEARCH & RESCUE
When normal people pick a hobby, it’s coin collecting or gardening or bowling or theater. Mine somehow ended up requiring me to get up in the middle of the night to go look for missing people. I’ve been doing this for over two decades, so either I love it, or I’m insane. It’s probably insanity. We talk about this a lot within the team, that you have to be crazy to do what we do. As I get in the car, I suspect my neighbors probably think something’s not right with me. I’m sure their security cameras and doorbell cameras capture my odd comings and goings.
I’m a member of Rampart Search and Rescue, the Adams County search and rescue team. The sheriff’s office uses us to solve problems that require training but don’t necessarily justify pulling a bunch of deputies away from addressing public safety issues and solving crime. We don’t enforce laws. We help locate lost people, those in distress, and those needing medical help in remote areas.
I reflect on the puzzle that appeared on my phone as I drive. The call out did not give me a lot of information, just that we have a missing at-risk individual with a cognitive impairment. We train for this all the time — lost person behavior is our bread and butter. Which demographic goes uphill? Which one follows the stream? Who’s likeliest to stay put? To engage in random wandering? Cases with cognitive impairment are probably the hardest. These individuals are not linear thinkers. Often, they have a jumble of emotion and memories and past experience, with a dose of desires and phobias built in. I can generally predict what a lost hunter will do, but tracking someone who’s on the spectrum or suffering from dementia takes a mix of gut feeling and flipping a coin.
The command post isn’t busy. The only ones there are the sergeant who called us out and our first member on scene. They have already started gathering the information needed for the lost person questionnaire so we can start building a subject profile. The LPQ looks at everything, attempting to build a holistic picture: subject description, medical history, goals, likes and dislikes, experience. We interview everyone we can to get additional information. Sometimes we get conflicting data and it’s up to us to resolve it.
The first part of any search is to deploy what we call “hasty teams,” initial response teams that run the area to look at the likeliest places the subject could be. We already have a team out, surveying the immediate neighborhood. The sergeant, a short but imposing woman, also has two units out, checking the surrounding streets. We’re expecting our canine team and we have a request out for our drone team. Missing person searches are jigsaw puzzles. Imagine dumping ten thousand pieces of jigsaw cardboard across a massive lawn. Finding them takes gathering clues from all possible resources. Some bits of information we will never find. Then we have to organize those pieces into something that makes sense, helps us build a picture. There are two pictures hidden here. One is the “planning data,” the information needed to understand the parameters of our search. Where would the missing person go? What are they likely to do? The other picture is our “searching data.” We’re looking for a specific person. Even at 1:00 am there are a lot of people out. How odd is that?
More of our members arrive and we regroup. The local phase of the hasty search is complete. We’re comfortable that our subject is not in our immediate area, so the perimeter is expanded. We’re still in hasty search mode, but we’re now considering how far our subject could have gone. He’s new to the area. He doesn’t drive, but he does understand bus routes. That complicates things. Could he have used a late bus to go somewhere?
We begin the next phase. Teams run all the bus routes within a mile distance of our subject’s last known location. While our team does this, law enforcement is going to all the open businesses to see if the subject has been seen. Not much is open at this hour, but there are convenience stores and gas stations and groceries and some fast food. We have to ask. We’re still looking for those jigsaw puzzle pieces lost in the grass.
Searches are frequent iterations of data. We put the clues – the puzzle pieces – together and see if they make sense. Yes? No? The pieces are reorganized. We’re looking for indicators, patterns, hotspots. Our data has to converge and this is what the planning team is responsible for. Operations are boots on the ground. They use the searching data to identify our subject in the field. Planning coordinates data, projects behavior, and establishes probabilities for where the subject is. That’s the planning data. Planning says, “search here,” the likeliest places for the subject to be. Operations puts resources in the field to explore those locations.
Our canine team arrives and we track down a scent item for the dog to work with. Well trained dogs are great. They don’t care if it’s day or night. It’s not a puzzle for them, it’s a game. All of us are feeling the stress – a human life is at stake. But the dog thinks he’s going out to play. If the game is successful, there’s a treat at the end.
Our drone has not arrived yet, but there’s a law enforcement unit in the field with a drone in the trunk, so we use them as a resource. We work well with law enforcement. It’s a strong partnership. We all have the same goal: find the missing person before something terrible happens. We always worry that we came late or we were called late. Bad things happen to good people. We’ve had callouts where the person we were looking for was already injured or dead, before the call. Not all stories have a happy ending. The ones that don’t are the worst. You feel the pain, even if you never met the individual. The mission is an adrenaline rush. It ends in high-fives and people hugging or … or the exact opposite. That’s the dark side of search and rescue, the mental scars and emotional trauma you can fall victim to. We’re human and we feel pain.
In the middle of the night, our command post is the hood of the sergeant’s SUV. We have two computers sitting on it, and radios and phones. This is normal in the first operational period. If things run long, there will be a mobile command post or a conference room, but right now it’s a small cluster of people trying to organize chaos. There is a lot of data we don’t understand yet, things we need to figure out. Our subject did not leave with a plan, at least not one that was shared with others.
A possible break — someone in the neighborhood, a mile away, called 911 and filed an odd report. A man had been messing with a trash can left out overnight. A clue? This would probably be ignored if it happened five miles away, but this incident is a mile from our location. Law enforcement sends a unit to investigate, something they would not normally do, and so do we. Picking a fight with a trash can is a minor infraction. It’s vandalism or littering at worst. But it’s an interesting data point in our search. The location is not on our list of places to explore, but it is adjacent to one.
We get lucky. A relatively quick operation. The report was indeed on our subject, confused and frustrated. Field units start coming back. There are a lot of smiles. A lot of hard work and a little luck. We were slowly building out our search area, and he was on the edge of an area we were targeting to search. If not for his indiscretion with a trash can, we would have fallen on his trail in the next hour or two, but quicker is better. We stumbled across an unexpected puzzle piece and that forced the entire puzzle to resolve.
It’s still dark when I return home, contemplating if enough adrenaline is out of my system or if I should stay up until it’s time for work. Finding someone safe and getting them home is an amazing feeling. It’s an emotional high and it leaves a residue for days to come. When those coin collectors and bowlers get up in the morning, they will have no idea what transpired in the dark of the night. As I pull off my uniform, I have the sensation that I’ve done more at night than they ever will during the day. Search and rescue might be an addiction. It keeps me coming back. That next page can be a mere couple hours of sleep away.
Bonus: A poem by Max!
Upon the hills so cold and bleak,
Where winds in mournful whispers speak,
A soul had wandered, frail and thin,
And none could trace where it had been.
Through shadowed pines and frozen ground,
A name was called, no answer found.
The creeping dusk, a dreadful foe,
Drew forth the fear that none dare show.
But lo! Upon that fateful eve,
A band arose, too strong to grieve.
With steadfast hearts and searching eye,
They vowed the lost they’d not let die.
Their torches cast a spectral glow,
Over rock and ridge, through ice and snow.
With every call, with every stride,
Hope’s ember burned, it would not hide.
Then sudden – hark! A distant cry,
A voice so weak, yet drawing nigh!
Beneath an aspen, cold and worn,
A soul once lost, no more forlorn!
They wrapped him warm, they soothed his fright,
And bore him back into the light.
For though the night was long and deep,
The brave had roused what would not sleep.
Thus never shall hope in darkness drown,
While searchers rise, where others drown.