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 wail 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 one of the deputies that she lost her husband just a few months before, so that might have contributed to her reaction, but I can't stop thinking about that sound, and the look on her face when she realized she would never see her daughter again.<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 climbing trip when he was supposed to, and we ended up having to do some serious climbing to get to where we figured he'd be. We found him trapped in a small crevasse with a broken leg. It was not pleasant. He'd been there for almost two days, and his leg was very obviously infected. We were able to get him into a chopper, and I heard from one of the EMTs that he's going to make a full recovery, but it was honestly one of the worst things I've ever seen. <br><br>* I get a lot of calls about pups that have fallen down holes or gotten trapped in other ways. I've saved a lot of puppies, and most of the time the owners are extremely grateful. But once, I get a call from some wealthy-sounding woman that her prize, championship, pureblood husky had fallen down a hole. I came out, saw that the dog was trapped, and was easily able to lift it out. It acted scared, but otherwise unharmed, and when I gave it back to the woman, she just grabbed it from me, tossed it in the back seat of her car, and drove away. No thank you, no nothing. Like I was some kind of snarky servant or something. I let it go, because hey, people suck sometimes, but it still bothers me.<br><br>* I was on a call with another SAR officer, and we were looking for a kid who had wandered away from one of the park shelters. We were looking in a nearby clearing when we heard a strange noise behind us. It sounded like rustling, and it was honestly exactly what you think of when you hear the term 'stalker.' We both turned to look, and we didn't see anything. We waited for a few minutes, and the noise didn't happen again, so we continued searching. A few more minutes later, we heard it again. It sounded closer that time, and we could tell that whatever was making the noise was moving towards us from the direction we were searching. We drew our firearms (we're all certified to carry) and continued to move in the direction of the noise. Suddenly, some branches burst apart, and a man comes charging at us. He was totally naked, and he wasn't acting like he was really aware of his surroundings. He charged us, and we restrained him. We couldn't figure out who he was, or where he had come from, and he wasn't in any shape to talk. We were able to get him back to the station, and we held onto him until we could figure out who he was and what the hell he was doing. We never figured out who he was, but we eventually figured out that he was a local student who had been missing for several weeks. His parents had called the police when he didn't come home, and they'd eventually given up and assumed that he'd either left of his own accord or had been abducted and killed. We never figured out what happened to him during that time, but when we called his parents to tell them we'd found him, they didn't believe us. When they came to the station to see their son, they were in shock. He was resting in the hospital, so we showed them the video we'd taken of him for identification, and they just kept saying that it wasn't him. That something was off about his face, and it wasn't their son. I don't know what to say about that, because I'm sure it was him, but I don't think they ever really believed us. As for what was wrong with the guy... we never really figured it out. He was pretty malnourished, which could have caused some delusions or something, but we never got any Warning Signs that it was that bad. We did figure out that he'd been using some drugs, but not enough to cause a complete break with reality like we saw. In the end, we sent him to a psychiatric ward, and I heard he's doing OK. Honestly, though, that whole experience really shook me. Something about the way he acted just haunts me, and I don't think I'll ever be able to get it out of my head.