Why volunteer search-and-rescue teams are now in need of rescuing, too

USA Today

02-05-2025

Why volunteer search-and-rescue teams are now in need of rescuing, too Already underfunded and largely underregulated, teams of volunteers that put themselves in harm's way to save strangers now face more pressure after Trump's federal cuts.
Show Caption
Hide Caption
Dog rescued after falling 100 feet into canyon at Colorado National Monument
A dog fell 100 feet at Colorado National Monument. Mesa County Search and Rescue saved her and she only suffered minor injuries.
Mike Sullivan had spent a year scouring dozens of Florida waterways when he finally saw it: the glint of a two-tone 1961 Chevrolet Impala.
Sullivan made the discovery while diving in a canal near Plantation, Florida, in August 2024, nearly 50 years after Doris Wurst and her 3-year-old daughter Caren went missing. He had finally found them.
"It was pretty emotional," he said.
Sullivan isn't a police officer or official of any sort. He's an auto parts salesman who volunteers his time to search for long-lost people.
Families frequently turn to such volunteers to find missing loved ones in unforgiving conditions, sometimes after years or decades of searching. These good samaritans often crack cold cases and use dogs, drones and helicopters to rescue everyone from natural disaster victims to missing children.
The demands on volunteer search-and-rescue groups are expected to increase as the federal agencies they work with face unprecedented cuts under President Donald Trump, putting pressure on a life-and-death safety net that's already stretched and often haphazard − unappreciated, underfunded and unregulated.
Advocates want more states to adopt basic guidelines with hopes more missing people will be found, volunteers will be better protected and bereft families won't fall victim to searchers-for-hire schemes.
"You've got teams with the latest technology, with standardized training, aggressive testing, continuing education, good, healthy budgets, and you've got people who just don't have the resources to really do much of anything, so just a wide range of capabilities," said Robert Koester, a search mission coordinator with the Virginia Department of Emergency Management. "There are places you want to get lost and places you don't want to get lost."
Dwindling ranks, lack of funding risk lives
Christopher Boyer, the executive director of the National Association of Search and Rescue, warned the demands on volunteers will only increase as federal agencies that support their work, including the National Park Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, grapple with massive, unprecedented layoffs by the Trump administration.
"Those are our two biggest issues right now in the industry," Boyer said. "The disassembly of government and how that's going to impact unfairly the volunteers that are going to have to pull up the slack for people."
Search coordinators say they already need more funds and their ranks are dwindling. Some volunteer groups are able to get resources from the government, but Boyer said the vast majority of the work is funded through grants and donations.
The Skamania County Sheriff's Office search-and-rescue team turned to GoFundMe in 2024 after thieves stole thousands of dollars worth of equipment while they were on a grueling three-day search for two lost hikers that began on Christmas morning. The men, a 59-year-old and 37-year-old from Portland, Oregon, were found dead in a Washington state forest after they disappeared while searching for Sasquatch, authorities said.
More: 2 men found dead after searching for Sasquatch in Washington state forest, authorities say
The reliance on volunteer labor and fundraising saves law enforcement a lot of money and provides them a vital service they couldn't otherwise accomplish, Boyer said.
"Volunteers are the force multiplier and have always been the force multiplier in the U.S.," Boyer said. "It's an altruistic drive for humans to help other humans."
How search-and-rescue teams bring home the missing
Koester, the search mission coordinator in Virginia, is an unabashed search-and-rescue data geek.
He first honed his outdoorsman skills as an Eagle Scout, then became a search-and-rescue volunteer while studying at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. As he rose through the ranks of the Blue Ridge Mountain Rescue Group, he realized there was a dearth of data to help him run searches.
So Koester compiled a database that now contains more than 500,000 missing person searches dating back to the 1970s. The research would become the foundation of his book, Lost Person Behavior: A search and rescue guide on where to look − for land, air and water.
About 80% of searches in the first iteration of Koester's database ended with the missing person being found safe. About 9% were injured, another 9% were found dead and 2% were never found, he said.
People can last a lot longer in the wilderness than one might think, especially if they have supplies with them, like a cell phone, Koester said. But the chances of survival start to dip after just 12 hours.
"Time is not the friend of the lost person," he said.
Koester's work has been used by volunteers − or as he calls them "unpaid professionals" − to develop search strategy across the country including in Nevada, where Mark Speer serves as the commander of Red Rock Search and Rescue.
Speer was enjoying his retirement from a career in law enforcement when a friend recommended he look into volunteering with Red Rock. "I did, and it's been one of the most rewarding times of my life," he said.
In December, he became their leader. Speer's team excels at wilderness searches and is more than 160 strong, comprised of doctors, pilots, service members and one 78-year-old nuclear physicist. Their specialized units include drone, canine and high angle technical rope rescue teams.
He said the volunteers invest more than 28,000 hours each year and spend over $1,000 on gear, training and missions. Despite their rigorous preparation, Speer said their biggest challenge is getting the public and even law enforcement to recognize who they are and what they can do.
Some days are easier than others, like when his team rescued the author of several books on trail running in 2024 after just a few hours of searching. The avid hiker recovered from the ordeal after three days in the hospital and decided to join their search team.
But the work often takes an emotional toll, Speer said, reflecting on a difficult search in January for a distraught 17-year-old girl. Speer's team searched for the girl alongside multiple local and federal law enforcement agencies for four days, each becoming more critical than the last. Her body was found in the desert, where officials say she died by suicide.
"It was a very trying time because there was some fear that was going to be the outcome," he said. "That affected the team − all of us really, myself included − at some level that we couldn't save her."
For Keith Cormican, the motivation to continue this difficult work is deeply personal. Cormican first started volunteering in the 1990s with his brother, Bruce.
When a father of three drowned in front of his daughters during their annual canoe trip, Cormican and his brother did what they could to find him. But heavy rain had flooded the creek and on the third day of searching, Cormican's brother got caught in the current, too.
"My brother drowned that day in 1995," Cormican said. "From there on, yeah, I switched gears in my life."
Cormican, became the leader of the dive team in Jackson County, Wisconsin for the next two decades and and creator of launched a nonprofit, Bruce's Legacy, dedicated to searching for drowning victims. He said his work has taken him up 16,000 feet to glacial lakes in Nepal and down to record-breaking depths in Lake Tahoe in California.
In March, Cormican drove 18 hours and sifted through terrain akin to an underwater forest to find the body of a Georgia teacher who disappeared with his fiancée while boating on Lake Oconee. It's emotional and stressful work, especially when he can't find the person he's looking for, but Cormican said what motivates him is knowing he's often the last resort for people who 'everybody's given up on.'
'If we hadn't found them, they'd still be missing,' he said.
Some states have no protections or standards
Many teams are highly capable, but the level of training, standards and protections required for search-and-rescue volunteers varies widely, according to Boyer.
Boyer said he has volunteered with his two dogs in California, where county sheriffs have their own uniformed, search-and-rescue team that are trained to meet standards set by the state. The state's disaster service worker program provides short- and long-term disability to injured volunteers.
Meanwhile in Texas, where Boyer is now based, he said there is virtually no regulation of search and rescue, meaning someone with no formal training can offer to search for families − and ask for their money. Sometimes, he said, it means a missing person's loved ones are the only ones on the ground looking.
"Those are the two extremes," Boyer said. "Every other state falls somewhere in the middle."
States with high populations and easy access to rugged wilderness, like those along the Pacific Crest or Appalachian Trail, often have the strictest regulations. But even within states like Washington, where natural wonders draw millions of tourists each year and more than 900 people are currently missing, requirements can vary.
There is no standardization for what the state's 45 volunteer teams must learn, according to Amy Albritton, Washington's search-and-rescue program manager. That can be a challenge when less-experienced groups are called to help their neighbors, she said.
"It's valuable in that it enables the jurisdictions to have the requirements or the capabilities that meet the challenges that the county is responding to," Albritton said. "But then it's also a challenge of just not having a clear path forward and clear direction on what to train on and what to do as a team."
Watch: Video shows incredible rescue of father, son stranded on a shallow ledge in Utah
Imposing uniform standards nationwide would be near impossible, Boyer said. But he said his organization has been pushing state lawmakers to make at least five basic changes:
clarifying which law enforcement agency is responsible for search and rescue;
designating a statewide search-and-rescue coordinator;
creating state training standards;
protecting volunteers;
and ensuring searchers can work across jurisdictions.
That hasn't happened, Boyer said, because "it's hard to get legislation through that is going to require some money...there has to be some political will behind doing that."
Searching for volunteer searchers
In Washington, Albritton said recruitment and retention have been "really challenging," particularly for less wealthy counties in Washington where residents may not be able to afford to take time volunteering.
Across the country in Virginia, where there are more than 350 active missing person cases, Billy Chrimes has been struggling with recruitment since the economic downturn triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We're starting to see a significant decline in the number of volunteers, and it has affected the number of people we ultimately see show up on each mission," said Chrimes, a volunteer firefighter and the search-and-rescue coordinator in the department of emergency management.
He said the labor and resources the state's roughly 20 teams pour into volunteering is worth an estimated $2.2 million, but the state only invests about $500,000 into the program. But, Chrimes said when he's proposed offering stipends to lessen the financial burden and attract more volunteers, he's hit roadblocks with legislators.
"Anything that we can do to invest in that, I think, is worthy of the cause," Chrimes said. "Because if we don't respond adequately, if we don't have the right resources, if we don't have the right training, if people don't show up, the alternative is that we're just letting people die."