One of the most impactful moments during my time with SAR was my first body recovery. It was Mother's Day weekend and two teenage girls went missing on the lake. Our team searched every square inch looking for them. Hours turned to days. We knew it would be a recovery, not a rescue at that point.
After a week, we scaled back the searches and began signing up for shifts to search with sonar in pairs. Nine days had passed since they went missing. I signed up for a random shift, showed up, hopped on the boat — and we ended up finding them.
By the time we made it back to shore with the recovered young woman, the family had arrived. We shielded their daughters from the media like they were our loved ones to protect.
After that first recovery, my respect for my teammates grew tremendously. We get to use our skills to recover loved ones in areas that not many people can reach to help bring families closure.
These families would never know our names, never know the scars that we carry, the therapy we go through, the impacts on our health. The media never runs a story on the people who worked behind the scenes — and I like it that way. I get to help people during their hardest moments in life, and that is plenty rewarding.