Volunteers from the Southern Arizona Rescue Association prepare to evacuate an injured hiker onto a waiting helicopter.
Volunteers with the Southern Arizona Rescue Association will celebrate their 50th anniversary this weekend. About a dozen University of Arizona faculty, staff and students are among the members.
In the 30 years the Southern Arizona Rescue Association, or SARA, has kept statistics, crews have performed some 10,000 rescue operations, everything from finding lost hikers and stranded flash flood victims to extracting people who have fallen into caves and mineshafts.
Tom Harlan will reluctantly miss all of the festivities. Harlan, a researcher in the UA Laboratory of Tree Ring Research, will be at the University of Tasmania to dedicate a new tree ring laboratory there.
It was Harlan, along with Eber Glenndening and Don Morris, who in 1958 were part of a public meeting on the UA campus called by the Pima County Sheriff's Office. Their goal was to create a cohesive unit that could be called to assist in search-and-rescue operations in terrain that required special expertise and equipment.
Harlan said the meeting evolved out of a tragic rescue attempt 50 years ago this month. A bitterly cold November storm swept into the region and blanketed the desert floor with several inches of snow, with more than two feet of snow in the nearby mountains. Searchers were called to look for three members of a local Boy Scout troop who were missing on a camping trip on Mount Wrightson in the Santa Rita mountains south of Tucson.
Harlan said up to that point search teams were composed of whoever happened to be available. "Notices would be posted on the radio asking for volunteers, but it never was an organized thing," he said.
Volunteers were drawn from parts of the old Civil Defense system, local ranchers, residents and hiking club enthusiasts, and they usually lacked any coherent plans to mount a search. The most organized part of any operation, Harlan said, often were the roadblocks to keep the curious out of the area.
The night the search for the Boy Scouts began, Harlan and his friends had to convince authorities at a roadblock that they were experienced hikers who knew the local trails. Before it was over, law enforcement and military personnel, forest rangers, Boy Scouts and others joined the search.
"We were the first on the summit. It was chaos and misery," said Harlan, whose hands and feet became frostbitten during the rescue effort.
The attempt failed and it took 19 days to find and recover the remains of the boys. To Harlan and others, the lessons of the tragedy were clear. Disparate units in the search found themselves fragmented and disorganized. Logistics, coordination, duty assignments and communications lacked any cohesion when time was a critical factor.
SARA was launched soon after, and in June 1959 the group performed its first rescue mission. Now 73, Harlan said he is still active with SARA although not in the field.
In the 50 years since he helped organize the first meeting at the UA, SARA has become one of the most recognized units in the country. The all-volunteer network provides search and rescue services throughout Pima County and southern Arizona, at no direct cost to taxpayers.
SARA is one of five search and rescue groups that form the Search and Rescue Council, Inc., including the Pima County Search and Recover Divers, Southwest Rescue Dogs, the Civil Air Patrol Neotoma Squadron and the Pima County Sheriff's Posse.
Besides finding hikers who have gotten lost or stranded by floodwaters, crews are specially trained to extract fall victims from mountains, caves and mineshafts.
They also help recover missing children and Alzheimer patients in urban areas. Lee Ryan, a volunteer and an associate professor of psychology at the UA, finds particular satisfaction in this aspect of SARA. Ryan's research focuses on Alzheimer's and memory. She said this is an opportunity to mesh her expertise with the community.
In the five decades since that first organizational meeting at the UA, SARA volunteers have rescued several thousand lost and injured hikers.
SARA President Brian Duffy, a project manager at the UA Steward Observatory, has been in SARA for about 10 years. Duffy learned a number of outdoor related skills while in the Marine Corps, and joined SARA at the invitation of several hikers not long after he moved to Tucson.
Duffy said SARA currently has about 150 members, 60 of whom are "field qualified" to perform rescue efforts in wilderness areas.
"Each volunteer goes through about 160 hours of medical, technical and search-related training before they go out into the field," Duffy said. The training continues each month, year-round. Members need to recertify their medical skills every year to remain current.
There also is no shortage of demand for their services. Tucson's weather and natural landscapes invite people outside. Duffy said they sometimes get into trouble when "they have overestimated their abilities or underestimated the terrain." About 40 to 50 percent of their rescue calls are in the Sabino Canyon watershed.
Duffy said this is one reason he and other SARA members are anxious to finish their fund-raising efforts for a new headquarters near the entrance to Sabino Canyon. The new facility will include a dedicated training center to replace the haphazard system they currently use.
"We've done training in peoples' garages, basements, at hospitals. This is why a permanent headquarters is so important," Duffy said.
SARA has outgrown its current headquarters, a former Tucson residence near the Rillito River that is now owned by Pima County. The anniversary event this weekend will celebrate the near completion of a fundraising drive to create a new administrative and training headquarters.
Duffy also credits several generous donors in the community for backing the capital campaign, including Joan Kaye-Cauthorn, Mel Zuckerman and Jim and Vicki Click.
Another Tucson auto dealer, Buck O'Rielly, also has donated toward the new facility. His son and the horse he was riding in the Rincon Mountains fell, injuring the younger O'Rielly's leg. A SARA team responded with first aid and then carried him out of the mountains on a litter.
Ironically, the Stokes litter they use was adapted by SARA volunteers. Rather than carry someone out on a litter by hand down steep, treacherous trails lined with cactus, SARA members attached a wheel from a motorcycle to the underside of the basket and handles to the front and back. That allowed two rescuers to handle the litter instead of four or six, and moved patients to safety far more quickly than before.
The model was field tested in Pima County and exhibited at an annual Mountain Rescue Association meeting. Search-and-rescue teams across the country now use some form of the wheeled Stokes litter developed here.
For more information about SARA and this weekend's fundraising dinner, contact Brian Duffy at 520-626-5606 or via e-mail at bduffy@as.arizona.edu.
Tickets are $100
Brian Duffy, president
Southern Arizona Rescue Association
520-626-5606