At 2304 in the evening of Wednesday, September 20th, the brigade SAR team leader sent out a request for team members to participate in a search for a missing person in the Tierra Amarilla area, reporting to incident base at 0200 Thursday morning. Two experienced members of the brigade responded as ground pounders, departing at approximately midnight. A third member of the brigade was incident commander.
Upon arrival at incident base we were briefed that the subject had last been seen Wednesday early evening, walking in a direction away from their home. The Brigade was first SAR team to arrive at incident base but was quickly followed by teams from Pajarito K9, Mountain Canine Corps, Taos SAR, and Santa Fe SAR, along with air support from Classic Air Medical Helicopter for a period.
The brigade team was initially tasked to clear several miles of road and adjacent area, starting at the point the subject was last seen, until we met up with a second team coming from the other direction. This was accomplished with no clues found. We were then tasked with doing a similar clearing on several shorter secondary roads. Again, no clues were found. At this point we were requested to return to incident base for a new assignment. As we were making our way back to our vehicle, at around 0620, who should we encounter but the subject heading in the opposite direction! A quick radio call back to incident base to let them know we had made contact with the subject and an NMSP officer was quickly dispatched to our location to give the subject, apparently no worse for wear, transport back to incident base. After a quick medical check by local paramedics the subject was released back to their family
It was a night of little sleep and lots of hiking but a happy ending is what we all always hope and strive for. Plus it was a cool night and the stars were mostly out, followed by a beautiful sunrise. We don’t always get such nice conditions on our missions!