When Heroes Are The Pits
Kris Crawford

It was a cold, but sunny day on Saturday, January 24, 2004. Dakota and I were practicing scent training exercises in the back yard when my pager went off. We were being paged to assist in the search effort for a missing woman suffering from dementia and early-onset Alzheimer's disease. She had been missing since Wednesday.

Police reports said that she rented a car in Castro Valley early Wednesday morning with the intention of driving approximately two hours north to visit her sister near Sacramento, but she never arrived. Authorities didn't know if she had been car-jacked or if she had gotten lost due to her Alzheimer's disease.

On Saturday morning, the car the woman had rented was discovered unlocked at the end of an old dead-end road in a wilderness area a few miles southeast of Castro Valley. They still didn't know whether she was car-jacked (and that's where the car was dumped since that was a popular dumping area for stolen cars) or if she had driven the vehicle to that location.

There was a sense of urgency to the search because it appeared the vehicle had been there a while and there had been inclement weather the previous two days. It had rained all day on Thursday and most of the day and into the evening on Friday. The temperature had dipped down into the 30's each night with highs only in the 40's.

Dakota and I arrived on scene along with eight other search dogs (three air scent dogs and five trailing/tracking dogs) and 10 ground searchers. As the trailing/tracking dog handlers were collecting scent articles from the car, Dakota and I, with a ground searcher named Jim, were deployed to search the wilderness area south of where the vehicle was located.

Most of the area was pretty dense woods with lots of fallen branches and leaves that were very slippery due to the recent rains. There were a couple of steep drainages nearby that we searched first and then another one a little farther west. When we finished searching that drainage we climbed out and started heading towards a very heavily wooded area. That is when I saw Dakota reach her head high in the air, stop, turn and start running as fast as she could up the hill the other direction zig zagging back and forth. She went about 75 yards and then I saw her drop down into another drainage and I lost sight of her.

Jim and I ran up the hill to where we'd last seen Dakota and started climbing down into the drainage. We were about fifteen feet down the side when Dakota came running back up alerting that she had found someone.

Dakota is an air scent search dog so she is trained to search for human scent in the air currents. When she finds a person, she returns to me, does an alert to indicate she found someone (Dakota barks), and then brings me to the person she found.

After Dakota alerted, she turned and started back down the drainage. I followed her as fast as I could but was slipping in the mud and leaves so it took a while to catch up with her. I was about 25 yards away from her when she stopped at the small creek at the bottom of the drainage. I looked closely around the area where Dakota was standing and saw a figure of a person lying at the bottom of the drainage, covered in mud and leaves, and submerged from the waist down in the creek.

I felt a lump in my throat as I called out to the woman and there was no answer. I told Jim to call Search Base on the radio to tell them that we made a find. I continued calling out to the woman as I rushed over to where Dakota was standing. But there was still no answer. In the background I heard Search Base on the radio ask Jim for the status of our subject. I heard him respond, "Standby for medical status, but it doesn't look good."

When I arrived to where the unresponsive woman was lying in the creek, I could see through the mud that she only had on a short sleeve shirt and sweat pants. I quickly wiped the mud off her face and neck and began my medical assessment looking for a pulse.

A few seconds, later my heart began to race even more as I yelled, "She's alive!!"

I ripped my jacket off and put it over her and finished the rest of her assessment as I waited for the rest of our search and rescue (SAR) team to arrive. They lowered oxygen, a back board, c-collar and blankets down the side of the drainage so we could stabilize her and get her out of the water. We then secured her in a stokes basket in order to haul her out with ropes and a hauling system. I assisted with her medical stabilization until paramedics arrived. As the ambulance was getting ready to leave, one of the paramedics said she was a very lucky woman because she would not have survived much longer. The paramedic patted Dakota on the head and then he hopped in the back of the ambulance and they rushed the woman to the hospital.

I congratulated the rest of our SAR unit for a job well done and Dakota and I walked down the road to our truck. Dakota and I were cold, wet and covered with mud, but I had a smile on my face and a feeling in my heart that I just cannot describe because...today we made a difference.

From left to right-Andrew, Jim, Kris (with back to camera) and Ryan

Craig and Bill lowering stokes down to Kris and others

From left to right -Kris (with black vest), Bill, Denise, Margaret, and Rhonda

This we do, so that others may live...