“Uh oh!” said Greg’s cell phone in a cartoon voice, followed by a series of musical beeps and bops. Greg’s eyes snapped open. The clock glowing on the bedside table said 2:42 am. He grabbed his phone and took a quick look at the electronic page: “Possible hoist request from Mountain Rescue Aspen. Climber on Capitol Peak, fell 60 feet, suspected head injury and hypothermia.”
Sliding out of bed quietly, trying not to wake his wife, Greg tiptoed down the stairs. He thought about how much he’d love to put the coffee pot on, but there wasn’t time. He grabbed his laptop, radio and cell phone and settled at the kitchen table instead of in his office. At least he could be near the coffee machine, in case he got a couple minutes break. Greg’s CSAR on-call coordinator partner, Deb, was already on Slack, the state coordinator’s real-time communication platform, checking in.
“I can do tech set-up,” she messaged. Tech set-up for a CSAR state coordinator call means setting up an incident-specific Slack channel for communications, plotting points on an electronic topographical map, and starting the BSAR Coordinator Document or BCD, an electronic record that tracks each communication or occurrence in the life of the incident. “I’ll contact the RP and start the Rapid Activation Form,” Greg messaged back. RP stands for reporting party, and talking to the person who called CSAR for help is usually the first step in handling a call for state coordinator assistance.
As the two coordinators got to work, Greg settled in for the long-term. Based on the nature of the call, he knew there would be no more sleep tonight. A life was at stake, and every minute mattered.
CSAR’s state coordinator program has officially been in existence since 1981, formed just eight years after CSAR (then CSRB) incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization to help coordinate backcountry search and rescue resources across the state. The program has grown in size and evolved in sophistication continuously throughout the last four decades.
“Back when I started, in 2008, you used to be able to run a call by yourself,” Greg Foley says, “but not anymore.” Greg is from Grand County Search and Rescue and was still working his day job when he first became a volunteer state coordinator. He owned and operated a snowmobile rental company and dealership, so he was able to make it work by having employees to delegate to when he needed to pivot to his state coordination work. He’s retired now.
“Nowadays,” Greg says, “you really need at least two coordinators on every shift. Sometimes you need more than that and others who are not on call will step in to help.” The coordinators call that “swarming a call.”
CSAR state coordinators come from the BSAR teams across the state that make up the Colorado Search and Rescue Association’s membership. Most have extensive experience running incidents for their own local teams, but they still train for about a year to become state coordinators. State coordinators must have a much larger quiver of tools and contacts to coordinate resources between different counties. They need to build up a knowledge base of how differently BSAR teams work, which teams have which specialties or resources, which teams work well together, and which typically have bandwidth for incidents outside their own counties. They need to understand the complicated processes and resources of various aviation organizations in Colorado, including medical helicopter companies, the Colorado National Guard, the Civil Air Patrol, and the Colorado Department of Fire Prevention. They must have a basic working knowledge of helicopter operations, search dog types, satellite messaging systems and technical rescue resources.
CSAR state coordinators are a second layer of response when someone is lost or injured in the Colorado backcountry. The call begins with a 911 call to an Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ) – a local sheriff’s office, national park, or tribal authority. Sheriffs in Colorado have a statutory responsibility to coordinate backcountry search and rescue in their counties, and most do it by using a volunteer nonprofit team. Teams work with their sheriff’s offices in different ways, some very closely and others more independently, but a team will always be the frontline of response before a state coordinator is called in. That happens when the AHJ and/or team decides they may need help beyond what they can muster locally.
CSAR’s 16 state coordinators work in pairs for one-week shifts, and while they’re the “tethered” part of the pair on call, their life is not their own. They cannot go hiking, or skiing, or out for dinner and a movie with their spouse without arranging back-up. Even going to a grocery store or walking the dog is difficult, because when a call drops, they need to be able to respond within five to ten minutes.
The most challenging and time sensitive type of call is a hoist request. When the life, limb or eyesight of an injured rescue subject is at stake, and technical terrain prohibits the landing of a medical evacuation helicopter, state coordinators will contact the Colorado National Guard for a hoist. A hoist request starts with looping in an air resource manager (ARM) from the National Guard on the Slack channel for that incident. The ARM is the aviation expert who will make all decisions regarding the feasibility and safety of doing a hoist. The ARM must think about current and future weather conditions, altitude, remaining available light, pilot availability and aircraft type suitability. At the same time, the state coordinators must help with aircraft deconfliction – is the team using other helicopters at the same time, to insert rescuers or scout the scene? Are there drones in the air? Do neighboring counties have any air operations going on?
“Hoists are challenging not just because they’re time critical,” says state coordinator John Slaughter, “but also because there is so much data that goes into planning them, and so many critical decisions that must be made. And everything is of high consequence, both for the rescue subject and the rescuers. We can’t make mistakes, and we’ve worked hard in recent years to increase the speed of our response.”
John has been a state coordinator since 2020, and was a member of Teller County Search and Rescue for 16 years. He too was still working when he became a state coordinator, as a data engineer for Raytheon, but he’s retired now. He points out that not all calls are as time critical as a hoist.
“A lot of calls are just asking for mutual aid teams of ground pounders from other counties, or a dog team, or a water rescue team,” he says, listing a few common examples in which an urgency triage process might take place. “The quick start-up window is not mandatory for those types of calls, so if I’ve taken a chance and gone to the grocery store, maybe I don’t have to end up in my car working off a hotspot in the parking lot.”
Sometimes a call is from someone who isn’t sure what they might need, or even what kind of help is possible. In those cases, the state coordinator becomes a consultant, working through the details of the incident by asking questions and making recommendations. Some state coordinators are specialists in certain technical fields, such as dog types or water operations, and they may act as subject matter expert advisors to the other coordinators or to an AHJ.
A common type of call is for a PLB, or personal locator beacon, activation. Unlike newer satellite messaging devices like a Garmin inReach or an Apple device with SOS capability, which send notifications directly to the AHJ where the call came from, PLB calls go to the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center (AFRCC) in Florida. If the signal is coming from Colorado, the AFRCC routes the call to the CSAR state coordinators, who must figure out where it’s coming from and where to direct it. PLBs are tricky because they could be false alarms, they could be someone needing a little assistance, or they could be a life in danger. There’s no way to know until it is determined who owns and/or triggered the SOS call and contact is somehow made with them by the AHJ and/or the state coordinator.
Both John and Greg say that having a supportive spouse at home can be a great help in being a state coordinator. A spouse who believes in the importance of the work can help out by taking household chores and errands off the state coordinator’s plate during the on-call week, being understanding about restrictions on planned activities, and forgiving the occasional interruption of their sleep.
“It seems like the most common time for a call to go out is ten minutes before dinner,” John says. “My wife will bring a plate to my office so I don’t have to go hungry, which I really appreciate.”
Deb Kelly, currently CSAR’s only female state coordinator, is married to another state coordinator and adds that the two of them enjoy doing all things SAR together. “It’s great having an interest we can do together and help each other with,” she says. “Scott has supported me as much as I have supported him by getting things done around the house, including meals when I am too busy with an incident.”
State coordinator call volume has risen steadily in recent years, doubling over the past ten years to reach 164 calls in 2024. Calls have also become more complicated. During the busy summer season, it’s not uncommon for state coordinators to manage three or four calls in a day, and there have been as many as 13 incidents in one week. The average incident required about ten hours of active involvement, and the maximum time a complicated incident has taken is 277 hours.
Given rising call volume, CSAR’s State Coordinator Program’s managers have put a great deal of focus on the coordinator recruitment process in 2025. Nine new state coordinators will begin training soon as of this writing. Are you a Colorado BSAR team member with incident command experience and an interest in having a greater impact? We recruit periodically, as needed; stay tuned to our blog and social media channels for future announcements. State coordinators not only enjoy the satisfaction of having more opportunities to help save lives, but they also learn a great deal about how different teams and AHJs operate across the state, which can help inform their work on their own teams.
Want to hear Greg’s cell phone ring? Uh-oh.
(Editorial note: As of the end of May 2025, the State Coordinator Program will trial shorter on-call rotations to replace the current one-week schedule.)
