By Vic Villalobos and Phyllis Wright
The Sun-News
LAS CRUCES, N.M. — It’s 8:45 p.m., and a call comes in from the on-call incident commander in District 12, Grant County, that they have a missing person, female, age 41. She’s been missing three and a half weeks, and they would like Mesilla Valley Search and Rescue (MVSAR) ground teams and K-9 handlers in place at incident base by 7:30 a.m. The subject may be down.
We usually don’t have this much time to prepare for a search, so in most cases, we try to keep our response time to under an hour. Tonight, the extra time can be both good and bad: We have plenty of time to pack extra gear, but we also have plenty of time to make up scenarios in our head of what “might have happened.”
We gather the members of the team who can go on this mission around 4:45 a.m., and we head up toward Emory Pass and over the top to Railroad Canyon Campground. We arrive shortly after 7 a.m. and greet other teams from the area as more and more searchers arrive. The command staff briefs us on the situation and decides to send our team into the field first, with the Border Patrol Search and Rescue team (Borstar) team directly behind us. Both teams have a K-9, and although the wind conditions are against them, we’re hoping the dogs will detect something.
We head up the trail as a seven-member team, “Team 1.” Wind conditions continue to deteriorate, becoming too strong and high for the K-9s. We spread out and search every fallen tree and overturned rock, looking patiently in every direction, as we train to do. We cross a strong-running stream about 14 times, checking for clues in and near the water.
An hour and a half later, about 1.5 miles up the trail, we are climbing away from the stream when one of our team members spots, through a small break in the brush, what appears to be a blue sleeping bag or tarp. Two of our members head back down the hill to cross the stream and investigate. At that same moment we notice movement in the bag, and then a small head pops out and looks our way. Our first thought is that it is a small wild animal, and we warn the members heading in that direction of the possible threat. The head continues to stare us down, and when one of our team members grabs her binoculars and says “cat,” we ask “bob or baby mountain”? She says “house,” and we glance at each other wondering what a house cat would be doing in the area.
By now, the two moving team members are approaching the sleeping bag. A few minutes go by, and we get the thumbs up. We assume this means that we have located our subject, but what we don’t realize for a few more minutes is that, yes, this is our subject-and she is alive! And this is her cat!
“Base, this is Team 1. We have located subject. She is alive. Stand by for her condition Oh, and she has a cat with her, house cat.”
By now the Border Patrol team has caught up to us and sends two EMTs from their team down to the subject. We quickly realize she hasn’t eaten in days and is starving, distraught, and in desperate need of help. As one of our team members stays with her to calm and reassure her that we will get her out, another team prepares to come up with a stokes (litter) basket to carry her out. Her concern turns to her cat, and she asks “please make sure my cat gets out with me.”
We advise incident base, and they immediately make plans and get clearance for the cat to ride in the ambulance and stay at hospital. We reassure the subject that everything possible is being done to ensure the safety of both her and her cat.
Once other teams arrive on scene, she and the cat that never left her side are secured in the stokes basket, and searchers rotate carrying her down the trail to a waiting ambulance, eight people on the stokes at a time.
In the days to come, we receive calls from media around the country, wanting to know what we did and how we did it. And what about that cat? All we can say is that the woman survived a tough ordeal, and her cat well, they both drank water from the stream, and her cat found food, as was evident by the rat and mice pieces around it. I guess a dog isn’t the only one that qualifies as man’s best friend.
As for the team, we must point out that we weren’t alone in this. It was a joint effort among all the teams that took part in this search and recovery. Our congratulations go out to all participating teams: Mesilla Valley SAR, Border Patrol Borstar, Organ Mountain Technical Rescue, Grant County SAR, Socorro SAR and the command staff at incident base.
Mesilla Valley Search and Rescue is a nonprofit organization. For more information, go to mvsar.org
Vic Villalobos is president of MVSAR, and Phyllis Wright is training director for the organization.
Bringing the missing woman out of the wilderness was a multi-team effort.
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