Copake, NY Search April 26th, 2009
Maya's track on the Copake, NY Search
It was Sunday morning and Rita called me at 7:30am to inform me that the Forest Rangers requested us for a search in Copake, NY for an 32 year old male with autism. I cancelled my dogs for the morning slots and arrived at the command post at 9:00am.
My plan was to start at the PLS and cast Maya around the perimeter of the entire facility which is approximately 100 acres. If Maya did not pick up any outlets of the subject’s scent away from the facility then we could have the area search dogs clear all the buildings that were possibilities within the facility.
At 9:00am the trail was 15.5 hours old. It took Maya and me, 64 minutes to cast around the entire perimeter of the facility. On the south side of our perimeter she had picked up scent and followed it about 300 yards, made a big loop (traveling in the direction of the arrows) as we came back around towards the road she got very animated and more intense, rushed down towards the swamp and gave me a negative (where the boxed X is on the map). I made the decision to continue to cast around the perimeter at point. Perhaps in hindsight this was not a wise decision. She had zero interest in the rest of the perimeter. After having did the entire property once I returned to base and reported my findings to the Incident Commander: only had trail interest to the south and that I’d like to rest her for 30 minutes then take her down the road a quarter mile and cast her for scent down there. If nothing turns up then either do the perimeter one more time or break out my area search dog and get an assignment to assist in building searches. About 15 minutes after talking to the Incident Commander the subject was located by police about 1.3 miles away, south near Upper Rhoda Pond. The subject’s location was southeast of where Maya and me had scent labeled as a large black dot in the bottom right hand corner of the map. If this search had continued any longer Command could have used this information as a direction of travel and started some area search dogs in that direction at the same time as doing building searches. The subject was alive and in good health.
