JAN 25, 2020
Summit County’s Search and Rescue volunteers sacrifice to find those who are lost or hurt in the wilderness
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Siddoway said that, while in most every case, SAR is searching for a person the team members haven’t met, they come to know that person very well in their mind.
He said he often develops close relationships with family members of missing people.
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“When you have to look at a family and say tomorrow at dark all of this equipment is going to go away — you feel it. You feel it. And they feel it too,” Siddoway said. “It’s a decision we do not take lightly. We’re going to go from 50 persons to three persons there in a couple weeks. … It is probably one of the toughest decisions that we have to make in a search-and-rescue situation, just because of all of the factors, the emotion that’s tied up in it. We become very vested in these calls.”
Those instances, though, are rare. Since 2003, the team has failed to find only three people: Garrett Bardsley, Melvin Heaps and Crumrine.
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“Tough to leave the scene knowing there was no closure,” Todd said. “Melvin Heaps, Carl Crumrine — not too many days I don’t think about them.”
Siddoway said those searches are not over.
“In my office, in Kamas, there are binders now in the bookshelf there for Garrett Bardsley and for Melvin Heaps. And those binders will be there basically until I leave,” Siddoway said. “I can honestly tell you as I talk with SAR members — and Bardsley obviously being 15 years removed, some of our older members were personally involved in that — they’ll still come up in conversation. Melvin, two years ago, often comes up in conversation: ‘You know — have we considered this?’”
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