News & Events

West Valley Search and Rescue Meeting

Description:

On December 15th a member of the WVSAR team died during a deployment for a missing hiker. Hope was asked to attend a meeting being held by the WVSAR team where the details of the event were going to be discussed. Our teams arrived early and met with several members as they came in. There were around 60 members present. The dogs moved to the back of the small room as the meeting started. The Sheriff department went over the results of their investigation. As you can imagine this was difficult and questions were asked. The next speaker was a counselor from The Counseling Team International who talked about grieving and dealing with this and how to carry forward. Several people starting asking questions and this discussion lasted over an hour. Several people came to the back of the room to interact with the dogs at this time. One thing that really stood out was all the support coming in from other SAR teams with offers of dinners, support for the family and a beautiful wooden flag memorial that the whole team took a picture with. After the meeting we stayed and many members came to pat the dogs, talk and thank us for coming. I felt a real bond in the room. These amazing people are all volunteers, train very hard and do a dangerous job in helping others. We made some strong connections that I believe will come through in the future.

Jodi Smith and Daltrey, Jackie Martin and Stanford, Beth Houser and Harley