By John Hankins
It’s a great day when you’re out in the backcountry, until it isn’t.
That’s when the Upper Ojai Search and Rescue team springs into action, rescuing people for 70 years, starting out “when we had four or five guys and we all rode horseback,” said the legendary Carl Hofmeister during a news interview a few years ago. Carl’s first search was with his father as a 13-year-old in 1934 and he retired at age 76.
Today, Ojai SAR has three mountain rescue teams, plus underwater, mounted, medical, K-9 and administrative support units. Similar units ply the land in other parts of our Los Padres Chapter, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.
“You call, we haul,” quipped Team Captain Bill Slaughter whose been ‘hauling’ with the team since 1988 and being an attorney in between. Of course, it’s serious business, and SAR has a list (as does the Sierra Club) on bringing the Ten Essentials on every hike (see page 6), even an afternoon saunter because, well, shit happens.
“People don’t bring common sense,” Slaughter emphasized, and that’s the most important aspect. By the way, you aren’t billed for a rescue, a common misunderstanding.
Most rescues locally are at Santa Paula Canyon where you could find people hiking with nonsensical flip-flops, shorts and a T-shirt.
Heat exhaustion, freezing, injuries from a fall, heart attack, being out-of-shape, drinking alcohol and getting just plain lost. Scour our local news and you’ll find such rescues are common; in fact, Ojai SAR responds to hundreds of calls every year. In June and July, heat exhaustion rescues happened and one year it rescued campers stranded in the snow and sleet from a surprise storm.
“Most don’t have an appreciation of what it takes to be on the team,” said Mary Looby, a Patagonia employee whose company lets her loose any time she’s needed. Currently, she’s working on what they hope will be the first-ever permanent base, the old Fire Station #20 at 12727 Highway 150, available when a more modern station is finished about a half-mile away.
“We’ve never had a base before,” Slaughter said, “it was all over the place.”
While the Sheriff’s Department provides some essential equipment, additional gear and tools are funded through donations.
SAR is a singular squad with unique skills, honed by hours of training. About 29 volunteers are in Ojai SAR, averaging about 4,000 hours per year on searches, rescues and public events. It’s not just the backcountry, Slaughter noted, they also do urban search and rescue and look for evidence at crime scenes. “Recently we had nine people out sifting through dirt on human remains.”
SARs were particularly handy during the Thomas Fire in 2017, being dispatched on Dec. 4 to begin evacuations in Santa Paula and Upper Ojai and later helping in Santa Barbara. And yes, several of their members lost homes during that disaster, and SAR lost equipment from a storage place at the base of Sulfur Mountain.
So, you want to be a SAR volunteer after all this? Sure, anyone can apply but they are extremely picky. You not only have to be in great physical shape, but you must also have basic skills, have the time to be called at any time and, spoiler alert, a unanimous vote-in by all team members.
Why do this? Listen to Carl Hofmeister: “If somebody needs help, I’ve always felt that I’ve got to help them,” he said in a 1997 VC Star article. He was severely burned while on his bulldozer helping to put out a fire in 1979, and despite burn pain for years afterward he would still go out.
“It gets in your blood,” he said. It hooked Bill Slaughter, who said the toughest memories come from body recoveries, notably a teenager dead in the water in a local river.
While all of us don’t have to give blood, sweat and tears, we can help them out by donating. Go to the website and Facebook to keep The public is in for an overdue up: www.OjaiSAR.org
