I'm a Search and Rescue Officer for the US Forest Service, I have some stories to tell

I wasn't sure where else to post these stories, so I figured I'd share them here. I've been an SAR officer for a few years now, and along the way I've seen some things that I think you guys will be interested in. <br><br>* I have a pretty good track record for finding missing people. Most of the time they just wander off the path, or slip down a small cliff, and they can't find their way back. The majority of them have heard the old 'stay where you are' thing, and they don't wander far. But I've had two cases where that didn't happen. Both bother me a lot, and I use them as motivation to search even harder on the missing persons cases I get called on. <br>The first was a little boy who was out berry-picking with his parents. He and his sister were together, and both of them went missing around the same time. Their parents lost sight of them for a few seconds, and in that time both the kids apparently wandered off. When their parents couldn't find them, they called us, and we came out to search the area. We found the daughter pretty quickly, and when we asked where her brother was, she told us that he'd been taken away by 'the bear man.' She said he gave her berries and told her to stay quiet, that he wanted to play with her brother for a while. The last she saw of her brother, he was riding on the shoulders of 'the bear man' and seemed calm. Of course, our first thought was abduction, but we never found a trace of another human being in that area. The little girl was also insistent that he wasn't a normal man, but that he was tall and covered in hair, 'like a bear', and that he had a 'weird face.' We searched that area for *weeks*, it was one of the longest calls I've ever been on, but we never found a single trace of that kid. <br>The other was a young woman who was out hiking with her mom and grandpa. According to the mother, her daughter had climbed up a tree to get a better view of the forest, and she'd never come back down. They waited at the base of the tree for hours, calling her name, before they called for help. Again, we searched everywhere, and we never found a trace of her. I have no idea where she could possibly have gone, because neither her mother or grandpa saw her come down.<br><br>* A few times, I've been out on my own searching with a canine, and they've tried to lead me straight up cliffs. Not hills, not even rock faces. Straight, sheer cliffs with no possible handholds. It's always baffling, and in those cases we usually find the person on the other side of the cliff, or miles away from where the canine has led us. I'm sure there's an explanation, but it's sort of strange.<br><br>* One particularly sad case involved the recovery of a body. A nine-year-old girl fell down an embankment and got impaled on a dead tree at the base. It was a complete freak accident, but I'll never forget the sound her mother made when we told her what had happened. She saw the body bag being loaded into the ambulance, and she let out the most haunting, heart-broken sob I've ever heard. It was like her whole life was crashing down around her, and a part of her had died with her daughter. I heard from another SAR officer that she killed herself a few weeks after it happened. She couldn't live with the loss of her daughter.<br><br>* I was teamed up with another SAR officer because we'd received reports of bears in the area. We were looking for a guy who hadn't come home from a hiking trip when he was supposed to, and we ended up having to spend the night out there. We set up camp in a clearing, and spent the whole night sitting by the fire, listening to what sounded like a bear prowling around outside of our camp. It never came into the open area, but we could hear it walking around just out of sight, and I could see eyes reflecting the light from the fire. We didn't want to go after it because we knew that there was still a possibility that the guy we were looking for was out there, and we didn't want to accidentally shoot him. We were both tired, and we ended up dozing for a few hours. When we woke up, the bag that had all of our food was torn open, and everything was gone. We figured it had been the bear, and that it had decided to confront us while we were sleeping. I'm glad it didn't, because I don't know if I could have defended myself the way I would have needed to. <br><br>* I helped find a man who had been murky and dehydrated for so long, he didn't even look human anymore. He was sitting in a stream, drinking the water and pulling his knees up to his chest. His skin looked like it was falling off, and he was so dirty we couldn't tell what color his clothes were supposed to be. He didn't even look like a person anymore, and if I hadn't seen his face I might not have even realized he was a person. We were in a bad area, and we knew that the guy we were looking for was somewhere nearby. When we called out to the guy to see if he needed help, he started crying and telling us that he'd been stuck there for a week. He'll be okay, though. <br><br>* One of my friends who is also an SAR officer told me about a guy they'd found a few years ago. The guy had been missing for well over a month, and they'd basically given up hope of ever finding him. He was out hiking alone in a pretty remote area when he disappeared, and no one knows what happened to him for the first few weeks. My friend said that they'd been out searching, and one of the other officers on the call had fallen down a cliff. She'd rolled, and when she stood up, she'd seen the guy sitting in a gully. He was caked with dirt and leaves, and he looked like a caveman. He didn't even look up when they approached him, and he didn't seem to comprehend what they were doing there. When they asked him if he needed help, he told them that he was waiting for his dad to come back. According to my friend, the guy smelled so bad that she had to stand way back from him as they led him out. She said that he could barely walk because he was so weak and emaciated, and that he kept trying to sit down. They ended up having to call for a chopper to come extract him, and when they were loading him onto the helicopter, he tried to fight them and told them he couldn't leave. He said he needed to wait for his dad, and that his dad would be angry if he left. They were finally able to sedate him, and they got him out. My friend said they didn't end up finding out what had happened to him until he was in the hospital, and he was able to talk to a psychologist. He'd been out hiking with his father, and they'd gotten stuck in a snowstorm. His father had fallen down a cliff and died, and the guy had been stuck out there for 53 days. He said that he'd tried to find his way out, but he'd never been good at navigating and he didn't have a map or compass. He'd ended up getting stuck in the gully, and that's where he'd been the whole time. He'd been eating berries and catching fish, and he'd somehow managed to start a fire. He said that he'd waited for his dad for the first few weeks, but he'd eventually realized that his dad was dead. He'd still felt like his dad was there with him, and he thought that if he left he would be abandoning his dad. The last time he'd seen his dad, his dad had told him to wait where he was, that he was going to go find help. He said that his dad had never come back, but he'd beenq told that he shouldn't leave because his father was just out of sight, and that if he left, his father would never find him again. Obviously, the guy had some mental problems, because he was absolutely convinced that his father was out there. He was taken to a psych ward after he was discharged from the hospital, and I don't know what happened to him after that.<br><br>* As an SAR officer, I'm also responsible for doing death investigations and verifying cause of death. In other words, I have to go out when a body is found and figure out why they died. A lot of the time, it's pretty obvious, and I don't have to do much work. A lot of the time, though, it's not cut and dried. Like when some guy dies of a heart attack, but his wife is convinced that he was murdered. I have to look at the evidence and try to figure out what really happened. Most of the time, I end up confirming that it was an accident, and that there's no foul play. I've only had two cases where I thought something more sinister was going on, and in both cases, I couldn't find enough evidence to call it a criminal investigation. The first case involved a guy who was out climbing, and somehow he fell and impaled himself on a stalactite. It was obvious that he'd fallen, but the thing that bothered me was that his climbing equipment had all been removed from his body, and it was all piled up at the base of the cliff he'd fallen from. I never figured out who might have done it, because no