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Four Boys Lost
December 1994
There is no such thing as a typical search, but this comes as close as any.
It was about bedtime on Tuesday evening December 27, 1994 when searchers' phones started ringing. It was callout team leader Betty McCarl - four boys were missing in the Crystal Boulevard area of the south county. Worse, one of the boys was prone to siezures, and had no medication with him.
Searchers put on their uniforms, loaded their gear into their cars, kissed their families good-bye, and were on the road within half an hour.
They began arriving at the command post, a fire station on Quartz Road off Crystal Boulevard, about 2300 hours. The Management team set up shop in the engine bay and the office while field personnel stood waiting for assignments outside. Throughout the night, worried families and neighbors showed up at the fire station and huddled by the big equipment bay doors.
The weather that evening was cold and breezy at first, but about midnight it began to rain. Then, as teams left on assignment, the wind died and a cotton-blanket fogs settled in and made it impossible to see even across the road.
Several foot and dog teams searched in the cold rain. In twos and threes they started where the boys were last seen and spread out across the countryside, looking for clues in the darkness. All they wished for was a sandwich wrapper, a footprint, maybe even a BB gun leaning against a tree to show them they were heading in the right direction. Shouting and shining lights, they probed through the wet grass and brush and mud, over hills and across streams.
Despite the rain gear, they got wet in the rain. Even if one percent of it finds its way inside, it feels like the faucet is on. Your feet never stay dry for long. And anytime you stop to get something out of your pack, the rain gets inside that, too.
Finally, about 3 a.m., all teams except a few were called in to get a couple of hours of sleep. No one pitches a tent on a search. Sleep is too precious. Searchers sacked out in their cars, or in camper shells if they were lucky enough to have them. SAR influences your choice of vehicles after awhile.
After a couple hours of sleep, everyone was roused to start another day. Someone had fetched fast food breakfasts for the searchers; cooking is another thing you never seem to have time for on a search. If there's no breakfast, or if you're in the field when it arrives, you munch the trail mix in your pack and hope there's some cold food left when you get back.
Today, however, before teams could be dispatched, word arrived that the boys had been found. They had walked almost all night and were six miles west of their starting point. They had found a road in the early light and flagged down a car. Everyone was fine, including the boy that was prone to seizures.
As one of the fathers told a newspaper reporter, "I was really happy with the response from Search and Rescue. It was magnificent. I can't say enough for what they did. I just want to express my heartfelt gratitude to Search and Rescue and the Sheriffs and the other volunteers. A lot of people lost sleep last night." |