When John Reller joined the ranks of CSAR’s State Coordinator Program in 2019, his interest was in being exposed to what other teams were doing that he could learn from. He also thought he had plenty to give to other teams; after all, he’d been with Summit County Rescue Group since 1987, and was one of the official founders of Colorado Rapid Avalanche Deployment (C-RAD) in 2016. As one of the most experienced dog handlers in the Colorado backcountry SAR world, he and his wife Andrea had served many mutual aid and even out-of-state search incidents and technical rescues over a period of decades.
John has lots of stories about memorable incidents, ones in which he felt he had the opportunity to make a real difference. One of his favorites is about a serious climbing accident in the Sangre de Cristo Wilderness in 2022. It was mid-May, late in the afternoon, when an incident commander for Custer County Search and Rescue (CCSAR), Alan Carter, sent a message to the on-call state coordinator voicemail line: “Custer has a really big incident going on, might need additional air support.” John called right away to speak to Alan and learned that a young man had fallen about 200 feet from a ridge near Spread Eagle Peak. He was part of a party of four Air Force Academy cadets from Colorado Springs on a 96-hour leave from the academy, and his three companions said they saw him fall, get back up and then collapse. He was below them and they were unable to reach him. Alan had already called REACH Air Medical for helicopter assistance and asked them to insert rescuers from CCSAR. Two rescuers and an EMT were now on scene with the subject, working to stabilize him, and had determined a hoist request was warranted.
Hoist rescues from the Colorado National Guard are typically coordinated by CSAR’s state coordinators and are only successfully requested when a subject’s life, limb or eyesight are at stake. Based on Alan’s report, John knew the hoist might be critical to the subject’s survival, and he worked quickly to get it approved through military channels. A couple hours later, a hoist rescue team, including rescue technicians from Rocky Mountain Rescue Group and Vail Mountain Rescue Group, arrived to hoist the cadet. They flew him to CCSAR’s SAR barn, where rescuers performed CPR and stabilized him enough that he could be flown by REACH to a level 1 trauma center in Colorado Springs.
John remembers the feeling of elation at hearing the patient had survived, against all odds. CCSAR was honored a month later with a formal presentation at the Air Force Academy, also attended by CSAR’s executive director.
Then John promptly forgot about the incident – on to the next! But a year later, one of John’s rescue colleagues emailed him a link to a news story from Fox17 in West Michigan. It was about the subject, now an amputee, planning to run a race called the Limb Loss 5k. “This kid is tough as nails,” John’s colleague said in the email.
Reflecting back now, John says it was the kind of incident that reminds him of the potential impact of his volunteer coordinator work. “Even the most competent and well-resourced teams occasionally don’t have everything they need within their own counties,” he says. “It feels good to be able to help them when they need it, especially when it helps them save a life.”
“This rescue was especially emotional for our team members,” Alan adds.
John says the mental practice of going through all different types of calls with different teams is invaluable to his work with his own team, Summit County Rescue Group. It broadens his awareness and educates him as to what expectations are realistic to have, as well as what unlikely events can be possible to those who don’t give up too quickly. He also says he’s learned a great deal about nonprofit governance since joining CSAR’s board of directors in 2023, knowledge that he can take back to his own team, whose board he also began serving on in 2025.
