Marry Cook, and her best experience with search and rescue.

By Logan Richardson.

Nov 1, 2021.

Over the past week I've been given the chance to talk to a former SAR volunteer, Marry Cook. Marry says "volunteering for search and rescue is a great option for anyone who wants to serve the community and save lives at the same time." Throughout this week she has told me about one experience in particular that impacted her the most. She also talked about the toll SAR can take on someone.

Throughout the interview I was just waiting for her best story. When she finally got to it I was blown away by the mental capacity one would have to have in order to deal with a situation like hers. ''One night we were called about a missing Snowmobiler, we got geared up as quickly as possible and set out for the mountains. we had to move quickly as it was easily below freezing and if the missing subject was injured they would not last long without the right equipment. When we reached the place where we were called from we saw a group of snowmobilers huddled around a fire. They rushed towards us talking about how one of their members had been separated from the group. After they gave us his last known location and his description we started to think that we would be searching for a dead body rather than a live person. After we finished the quick briefing we set out as quickly as possible, we headed down the mountain until we saw a drop off ahead. There was a pair of snowmobile tracks that went right off the ledge. It was then that our worst thoughts started to become a reality. The ledge was too steep for any normal snowmobile to go down so we set off on foot. After walking down the ledge for about a mile we found a snowmobile that was completely wrapped around a tree, after examination we found nobody but we did find a pair of footsteps. We tracked the footsteps to a creek. It was there that we found the body. He had fallen in the creek and was soaked head to toe. He had taken off his jacket and pants as a result of hypothermia. No one in my group wanted to go near the body so I had to, I checked for a pulse but there was none. We took off all his clothes and each took a piece of our own and put it on him, Started a fire and then waited. After a few minutes I decided to check his pulse again, There was a pulse! I shouted to the rest of the group and they ran over to see if it was true. After almost ten minutes he woke up and started talking, we calmed him down and took him back to camp. Once he seemed well enough to travel back down the mountain we took him to the hospital to be treated for hypothermia and frostbite. A few weeks later I learned he was actually my neighbor, he even returned the clothes that we gave him back on the mountain."

Mary Cook Exceeded any of my expectations with this story. Whenever I thought about SAR I thought about helping out with smaller events like Car accidents and false alarms, Instead Marry says. "We rarely deal with the smaller events, the only events we deal with are searching for missing persons and then rescuing them. Thus it was given the name Search and Rescue(SAS). "She also mentioned multiple times "Ive had countless interactions where if we had shown ten minutes later the subject would be deceased." "In order to be in the SAR you have to be focused on the task ahead you can't get distracted, scared, or even sidetracked for a single second. You will also need an experience with the outdoors and outdoor equipment." Marry stated.

The last thing that she wanted to cover was what the kids in her story could have done differently so that it would never have happened. "In order to avoid an event like this Make sure you stay close to the rest of the pack, make multiple stops along the way to make sure everyone is still there. Also make sure you wear proper clothing, the kid in the story was wearing jeans and a light jacket. The last thing to do is go with experienced riders that know the rout and what conditions are safe to ride in."