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 story that sticks out in my mind was a little boy who was out with his father. The father was a former construction worker who'd lost a lot of his sensibility to pain when he lost a few of his fingers. He'd tossing his son a baseball, but the boy was bad at catching and it had sailed into a thin ice-covered pond. The boy had gone out to get it, and had fallen through the ice, and his father had gone out to get him. The father had gotten him to safety, but in the process he'd lost most of the feeling in his legs. He'd gotten hypothermia, and his legs were still freezing as we got to them. He was trying to keep his son warm, but the boy was dead. We got them both down the mountain, and the father was taken to hospital. I found out a few days later that the father's legs had been so badly damaged that they'd had to replace both his knees and ankles. He would have been in a tremendous amount of pain, but he refused to take anything strong because he was afraid it would mess with his memory of his son. He didn't want to forget a single moment, even if it was the last. <br><br>* I was on a rescue call with one of my co-workers, and we were both sitting on a cliffside overlooking a stream. We were waiting for more personnel to arrive, and we were shooting the shit and talking about our family. I have two daughters, and my co-worker has a son. He was telling me about all the things his son had wanted to do before he grew up, and I mentioned that my oldest had said something similar. I told him that my daughter was afraid to miss her chance to do anything, and I asked if he'd had the same issue with his son. He told me that his son had died in a tragic accident when he was ten, and that he'd been dead for two years. I was shocked and apologized profusely, telling him I had no idea. He said it was okay, that he'd been dealing with it for a while and it didn't bother him too much anymore. <br><br>* As an SAR officer, I'm usually just looking for people. But every so often, I'm called out to look for animal. Typically, these calls are for pets who've gotten lost in the woods, but in one case it was for a search dog. The dog had been used in a case that I wasn't on, and at the end of the search, the dog had run off to follow a scent. When the owners had called him back, he hadn't come, and they'd lost sight of him. They'd waited for hours, and finally they'd called us to come out and find him. I was the one to find him, and I've never forgotten it. The dog had climbed up a tree, and then jumped to another. Except he'd misjudged the distance, and he'd fallen. He'd broken several of his limbs, and his bag had gotten caught on a branch. He was strangling, and he'd tried to scratch his way free. In the end, he'd fallen almost twenty feet to the ground, and it had killed him. I've never heard anything so upsetting as the cries of his owners when I brought him down and they saw what had happened. <br><br>* One of my co-workers used to be in the military. He was a medic in a few different conflicts, and when he got out he couldn't find anything else that he liked to do. He joined up with us because it was as close as he could get, and he's been with us for a few years now. He's a great guy, and he's saved dozens of lives with his training and skill. However, he has one major flaw: he can't handle kids. He's not into them, he doesn't like them, and he won't help them. A few times, we've had calls with injured children, and he's just ignored them. He will *only* help an injured child if there is no one else around, and the child is in danger of dying. I've never seen him take a call that was only for a child, and I don't know what would happen if he got one. The one time I brought it up to him, he looked at me weird and walked away. I don't even know if the rest of the crew is aware of his issues with children. <br><br>* We got a call from a man who was out hiking with his dog. The dog was a pitbull, and it was apparently very well behaved and welltrained. The man was on a hill, and he'd thrown a ball down into a gully for the dog to chase, and the dog hadn't come back. He'd waited for almost an hour, shouting for the dog, and when he finally came to check on it, he couldn't find it. He said the dog would never leave him, and he was getting worried. When we arrived, we searched the area and we couldn't find a trace of the dog. We even had a canine out, and it didn't pick up any scent. We told the man that the dog had probably run off after something, and it would come back when it was hungry. He didn't want to leave it, and said he would stay there until the dog came back. We told him that we couldn't keep people out there, but he could stay until nightfall and search on his own. I don't know if he ever found the dog, and I hope it turned up okay. <br><br>* A woman and her daughter were out hiking together, and the mother slipped and broke her ankle. She called for help, and we came out to get her. When we reached the pair, I volunteered to go back with them to the truck, since I hadn't been doing any of the heavy lifting. As we were walking, I asked the daughter how her mother had slipped, and she said that she didn't know. She said that she'd been in front of her mom the whole time, and she'd never even seen her fall. She'd heard her scream, and then she'd gone back to help her. I was baffled, but I figured that the mother had just slipped and the daughter had just never seen it happen. However, when we got to the truck and the mother was being loaded in, she looked at me and said 'I'm really glad my daughter was with me. I don't know what would have happened if I was out here alone.' I agreed, and she asked me to clarify something. She said 'I meant, I'm really glad that my daughter was with me. I don't know what would have happened if I was out here alone.' I told her I understood, and we took her to hospital. <br><br>* Something that's not so weird,