{"id":4027,"date":"2022-03-24T15:23:26","date_gmt":"2022-03-24T22:23:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/?p=4027"},"modified":"2022-03-26T15:31:05","modified_gmt":"2022-03-26T22:31:05","slug":"women-leaders-are-an-integral-part-of-el-dorado-county-sheriffs-volunteer-search-and-rescue-unit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/2022\/03\/24\/women-leaders-are-an-integral-part-of-el-dorado-county-sheriffs-volunteer-search-and-rescue-unit\/","title":{"rendered":"Women leaders are an integral part of El Dorado County Sheriff\u2019s volunteer Search and Rescue Unit"},"content":{"rendered":"
[Comstock]<\/pre>\n
Lifelong Rescue resident Katie Thorne puts in 40 hours a week as a physical therapist in Cameron Park. Marijke Ellert is self-employed and keeps busy as an equine farrier, while Tess Hendricks has worked for almost 20 years as a laboratory scientist at Folsom Lake College.<\/p>\n
But they will all put their day jobs on hold at a moment\u2019s notice to join the El Dorado County Sheriff\u2019s volunteer Search and Rescue Unit. The three are among the 47 women who went through a rigorous training process to be part of the unit\u2019s 167-volunteer group, agreeing to quickly respond to incidents, says Jared Melton, who runs the department\u2019s Office of Emergency Services.<\/p>\n
Melton says in the past two years, volunteers responded to almost 60 missions \u2014 everything from a search for a missing child to being a part of the immense two-month Caldor Fire response in El Dorado and Amador counties, with the El Dorado unit putting in over 2,000 hours on the Caldor response alone, Melton says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can be on a search until 6 in the morning, go home and take a shower, then see my first patient at 7,\u201d says Thorne, who works for the Cameron Park Physical Therapy Center. She has volunteered with the El Dorado unit for about 20 years, heads the horse-mounted search unit, and also was in charge of staffing the two largest animal displacement facilities for the county during the Caldor Fire. \u201cWe\u2019re all perfectly willing to drop our lives to help a stranger. It\u2019s a neat group to be in.\u201d<\/p>\n
The El Dorado County Sheriff\u2019s Search and Rescue Unit provides a wide range of emergency rescue services to those who are lost, stranded or injured, often helping out neighboring counties through the state\u2019s mutual aid agreement. Volunteers assist with cliff, ground, swift water, horse-mounted and K-9 search and rescue teams, in some of the roughest terrain and weather conditions imaginable, with women an integral part of the effort.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur mission of saving lives is accomplished through the support of highly trained volunteers,\u201d Melton says. \u201cMany of our women volunteers have proven to be some of the most valuable subject matter experts in their respective specialties.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thorne says her mounted unit currently numbers five members, down from around 50 pre-COVID. Thorne houses two horses at her ranch in Rescue, including one she leases to another team member. The horse she uses, a Percheron paint cross she\u2019s had for 15 years and taken on approximately 30 incidents, is the only horse with the unit that has gone through scent training, she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe can sniff out people, much like canines can,\u201d Thorne says.<\/p>\n
Ellert has been with the unit since 2018, working mostly ground searches, she says, but also on the K-9, mounted and technical rope rescue teams. She\u2019s put in hundreds of hours on \u201clots of little searches that didn\u2019t make the news,\u201d she says, but also notably the Caldor and Camp (Paradise) fires. Ellert is currently halfway through a two-year training program for a 1-year-old Belgian Malinois, getting her ready to be eventually used by the K-9 team.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love the outdoors, so I feel like I have a really good skill set to help the team,\u201d Ellert says. \u201cIt\u2019s been great, really exciting. I feel like I\u2019m making a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hendricks has been leading El Dorado\u2019s Incident Support\/Management team for about four years, handling tasks related to animal services, logistics, personnel and base camp management. (\u201cUnofficial title is fixer,\u201d she says.) She […]<\/p>\n
READ MORE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Melton says in the past two years, volunteers responded to almost 60 missions \u2014 everything from a search for a missing child to being a part of the immense two-month Caldor Fire response in El Dorado and Amador counties, with the El Dorado unit putting in over 2,000 hours on the Caldor response alone, Melton says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4028,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/ScreenHunter-1805.jpg",1085,894,false],"thumbnail":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/ScreenHunter-1805-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/ScreenHunter-1805-600x494.jpg",600,494,true],"medium_large":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/ScreenHunter-1805-768x633.jpg",640,528,true],"large":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/ScreenHunter-1805.jpg",640,527,false],"1536x1536":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/ScreenHunter-1805.jpg",1085,894,false],"2048x2048":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/ScreenHunter-1805.jpg",1085,894,false],"darknews-slider-full":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/ScreenHunter-1805-1085x720.jpg",1085,720,true],"darknews-featured":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/ScreenHunter-1805-1024x844.jpg",1024,844,true],"darknews-medium":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/ScreenHunter-1805-720x530.jpg",720,530,true],"darknews-medium-square":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/ScreenHunter-1805-350x350.jpg",350,350,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"News MoLo","author_link":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/author\/admin\/"},"category_info":"News<\/a>","tag_info":"News","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4027"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4027"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4029,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4027\/revisions\/4029"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}