The call was not unusual. Dorian and his "whiz kids" are state-of-the- art when it comes to finding someone missing in the outdoors. Although technically regional in responsibility, the Greenville-based contingent responds to requests from anywhere in the state, as well from other agencies, such as local and state police. This call came from a lieutenant warden from another division after all local measures to find the woman had turned up nothing. "I must have had 100 calls that day" organizing the Caribou search, Dorian recalled, "with two cell phones going at once as well as my radio and beeper."

Recently, Dorian and his colleagues were called out to find retired Piscataquis County Sheriff Mel Graves when he didn't return on schedule from a day of bird hunting. Graves was spotted by an air patrol, and found healthy but with a disabled vehicle north of the Golden Road. Grimmer searches have included murder victim Amy St. Laurent in Berwick and the skeletal remains of two infant children buried in Baxter State Park.

Some calls are false alarms, such as the one that came in at 2 a.m. on a Saturday morning for a threat to commit suicide by drowning in a lake near Lewiston/Auburn. By 4 a.m., the dive team had been alerted, and at 6 a.m., when the team was on site getting ready to go in the water, the supposed victim "walks down the road" at them, Dorian reported.

While no search and rescue operation is truly typical, certain elements are common to all. First, Dorian notifies his Overhead Team. This is a group that includes a team commander, "a maps guy, a logistics guy, an operations guy, a communications guy, and a briefing and debriefing guy," Dorian explained.

The group works from a 20-foot trailer equipped with highly sophisticated technical equipment. A big search is very complicated, often involving hundreds of people, most of whom are volunteers. The search for the Alzheimer's victim in Caribou pulled volunteer search and rescue people from as far away as New Brunswick.

A strong component of most searches are volunteer dog teams. This volunteer commitment is not casual. Both the human and canine components must be highly trained. There are also dog teams connected to the warden service. Sgt. Roger Guay, who found the Caribou woman, owns two dogs he has trained personally.

The team organizes the search, dividing up essential areas. Using the existing statistics from the case, the operations manager assesses all the potential resources, from volunteers, to number of all-terrain vehicles, to how many helicopters might be available, and then breaks up the search area into five blocks, rating them from most likely to least likely to contain the object of the search.

The logistics manager figures out how to provide services to the cadre of volunteer and professional search personnel. Often a search goes on for days, and people need housing, food and other public services.

The maps manager works with Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) technology and computers to create grids and record any evidence that may show up in the process of the search. In order to have the left hand know what the right hand is doing, briefing and debriefing is managed by one individual.

A "Hasty Team" is formed from experienced wardens, who "do whatever you think should be done," Dorian explained. This group literally roams the search area, the member's steps directed by his take on the existing information, looking for evidence. "We're not looking for a person, you know," Dorian said, "we're looking for clues." A bent twig, a scrape on a tree trunk, a thread, a button, a partial footprint may produce a pattern and create a trail for the searchers to follow, he said. Then another person documents the whole search, Dorian explained. This record is valuable afterwards, because "we are always scrutinizing the process to see if we can improve on it," he said.

Last week, Dorian got a call from an agency in Massachusetts. A three-year-old boy was missing. When he finally was able to return the call, he found that the boy had been found, but only after Sgt. Guay had called back in Dorian's stead. "You know, they said what Roger had told them was exactly right on, that they found the kid because of his assessment of the situation," Dorian said. "That's so great. He was able to do it over the phone."

Next week: A closer look at search and rescue operations and logistics: an interview with Sgt. Dan Carroll.
"This content originally appeared as a copyrighted article in the Moosehead Messenger and is used here with permission."