By Bill Fonda
About three days into a search for a missing person is what Doreen Michalak of Peterborough calls a “run for the finish line” that includes wondering if the person is still alive.
“You just don’t know what you’re going to find,” she said.
After being called with fellow New England K9 Search and Rescue volunteers to Cavendish, Vt., early in the morning of June 14, Michalak was in that third day of searching Thursday afternoon. She had covered most of her area, and was coming down to the last few passes when her dog Neeko started acting differently.
“He gets really wiggly when he gets scent, and his ears start going down a little bit,” Michalak said.
The dogs search by scent, and Neeko’s nose had led him to 65-year-old Donald I. Gurney of Springfield, Vt., in a wooded area near Knapp Pond in Cavendish.
“It’s so cool, and I’m so humbled right now,” Michalak said.
According to Vermont State Police, Gurney was dehydrated, but otherwise in fair condition. Michalak described him as tired, hungry, confused and dehydrated, but still well enough to crack some jokes while they waited for rescuers to arrive. According to Vermont State Police, Gurney was checked by medical personnel and then transported by ambulance to Springfield Hospital.
“He was actually in really good shape. He drank all my Gatorade, two bottles of water,” she said.
According to Vermont State Police, investigators believe Gurney, who has Alzheimer’s disease, became disoriented while he was out for a drive, parked his vehicle and set out on foot. He was reported missing at 4:50 a.m. June 14. Along with New England K9 Search and Rescue, the Vermont State Police Search and Rescue Team, Vermont Warden Service, the Upper Valley Wilderness Response Team, Stowe Mountain Rescue, Colchester Technical Rescue, Waterbury Backcountry Rescue and the fire departments from Cavendish and Reading took part in the search.
When members of New England K9 Search and Rescue arrive, Michalak said they plan the areas they will search, and try to send other searchers elsewhere so as to not create additional scents for the dog to process. Each member of the team has his or her own GPS that can not only track their whereabouts, but those of all the other team members.
The first objective, Michalak said, is to determine if the person is within the first half-mile, which she said in this case was an area measuring 520 acres. If the person is not found, the search is expanded. Gurney was eventually found 1.5 miles from Parker Hill Road in Cavendish, where crews had previously located his truck, meaning the search area was thousands of acres, according to Michalak.
Michalak described the area she searched as muck and swampy with ferns up to 4 feet tall and 5-foot-tall thorn bushes that forced Neeko to jump or stand on higher points so he could smell. There were also old logs on the ground.
“It’s impossible to walk through without falling on your face. It was very hard terrain. I don’t know how this gentleman made it where he was,” she said, adding that during the 90-minute wait for rescuers to take Gurney out, she heard chainsaws cutting a path so they could get vehicles in.
Neeko is 2.5 years old, and was just certified to search in May. Michalak’s previous dog Djenga, who she worked with between 2017 and 2019, found a dead hunter, a gravesite in a murder investigation and a boy who had been missing for 16 months before his body was found, but this was Neeko’s first find.
“He was a rockstar,” she said.
Michalak said Neeko was quite calm after finding Gurney.
“He just wanted to lay on top of him, and the guy did not want him to move,” she said. “It was just so precious.”
Michalak said she trains four or five days a week, and “when our team makes a find like this, it’s a team find.” That team includes Caiden Tillman and Trace Borozinski, two local teenagers who will hide in the woods so Neeko can practice finding them.
“They haven’t been lost yet,” Michalak said.
It’s not for lack of trying. One time, Borozinski said he and his girlfriend hid under camouflage netting in a spot above the ConVal field hockey field. From where they were sitting, they could see Neeko starting to look for them, and once the wind shifted and blew their scent his way, he found them in about 90 seconds.
“It was nuts to watch,” Borozinski said. “It was so cool.”
Borozinski, an 18-year-old ConVal graduate, has known Michalak since second grade, when he was at The Well School and she was a physical education teacher. He said talking about his work training the dogs makes for a great conversation starter, including with someone he spoke with at Maine Maritime Academy, where he will be studying marine transportation operations.
“He had no idea kids got into it,” he said. “If more people got into that, I think it would bring us all a little closer.”
Borozinski said it was awesome to hear about Michalak and Neeko rescuing Gurney.
“It’s really cool,” he said. “I feel like I’m a part of it, like I helped train these dogs.”
Posted June 20, 2022
Bill Fonda 