Searcher's Work Sad Yet Rewarding

Carol Chelin knows the mean streets well. She's also well aquanted with the back roads, corn fields and ditches. With the help of three dogs and a half dozen volunteers. Ms. Chelin scours these places - many of them remore - to find people. Some are alive. Most are not. For five years. Ms chelin has run k-9 Search and Rescue, a volunteer organization that helps Midlands law enforcement agencies search for missing people. In recent months, the organization helped search for candice Harms, the 18-year-old University of Nebraska-Lincoln student who disappeared in late September. her body was discovered last month.

In July. Ms Chelin's dogs helped lancaster county Sheriff's investigators find JJ Bringsplenty. 3., whose body was stuffed into a suitcase and buried in a ravine on the northwest edge of lincoln, The boy's guardians, Aaron and Millie Yelloweyes of clarksville, Tenn, were charged with his slaying.

Ms. Chelin and a group of volunteers work with a six-year-old bloodhound named Ruby Begonia (pic coming soon) and two three year olds - Power Pete,a Labrador retreiver (Pic coming soon), and DeCoucy's Ouiconda. an American Tundra Shepherd, whom they call Ooey. "The dogs don't do it alone. The people don't do it alone. It's definately a team approach." said Ms. Chelin, who lives in rural Cass County.

The people who work with Ms. Chelin. including son dan Whitfield. 26, know how animal follow scent and how to keep humans and dogs safe during a search. If a find isn,t made, it's not because the dogs failed. Ms Chelin said. It's because the handler didn't have sufficient information about the search area or didn't plan properly, she said. "The dogs go out there and give it their all." she said. The animals have unwavering trust in the people handling them, so the handlers must honor that trust by learning to pace the dogs, give them rest periods and keep a sharp eye on hazards springing from terrain or the elements. Ms Chelin said.

A former Omaha police detective, this woman with the white-blonde hair and steel-blue eyes still carries caution like a sidearm. She chooses her words with guarded precision. She is used to looking at life's dark side, but is not fully comfortable with talking about herself or her reactions to that murky world. Ask her a personal question and those eyes narrow behind the trail of smoke rising from the cigarette she holds lightly in her hand.

But stand back in her office and watch her with Pete, the eager to please black Lab. there, her tone turns to the affectionate cooing of a mother to a child. There, she speaks with concern about his recent throat throat infection and how it caused him to lose weight.

She said she has always loved dogs. She has worked with animals for 27 years, including obedience training and some protection work. That background, she says, has prepared her for the volunteer work she now does.

She learned about scent training from dog handlers in Mississippi and other places. she said "there's no such thing as Search and Rescue U" for animals and trainers to learn how to find bodies. So most of her learning has been on the job.

She boast - with charecteristic caution - that her dogs are the only trained cadaver-search dogs in the state, but she knows other trainers will dispute that.

"People get more defensive about their dogs than they do about their kids." she said with a wry smile.

She estimated that about 30 dogs in Nebraska do law-enforcement work like sniffing for drugs, protecting officers or apprehending suspects. But these dogs don't search for bodies, she said. Her animals work not only in Nebraska but also Iowa, Kansas and Missouri.

David Pekarek, an investigator with Lancaster County Sheriff's Office, said Ms. Chelin's dogs were the only qualified local dogs his office could locate during a nationwide search for animals to assist with the Bringsplenty case. There are only a handful of trained cadaver-search dogs in the country. Pekarek said.

Ms. Chelin's dogs helped searchers pinpoint the location of the little boy's body, said Pekarek. Searchers had been digging below and to the side of the actual spot, he said.

Beacause of the dog's success in that case. K-9 Search and Rescue was called in on two other searches, both for Miss harms. Pekarek said. He said he could not discuss details of those searches. Two Lincoln men have been charged in connection with her death.

Ms. Chelin ephasizes the scientific aspects of her work.

Scent, she said is "very sophisticated, complicated." She said forensics is involved. Human scent - more individual than a fingerprint is composed of sweat, oil and dead skin cells. People, cadavers and objects all have different scents, and the scents are affected by the enviroment they're in, how long they've been in that enviroment and other factors.

When skin cells are sloughed off the body, they fall to the earth and begin to decompose, giving off a gas. Ms. Chelin said. As people move about, their scent falls within about a two foot radius of where they are, in much the same way that baby powder sprinkled from a can would scatter. Ms. Chelin said.

She uses this knowledge about scent to organize searches, always starting cadaver searches at sunrise, for example, because scent rises in the morning as the earth warms. That way, the scent can rise right into a dog's nose, she said.

"Scent rises just like the sun does. The later it gets in the day, the higher the scent goes, the weaker it is."

She said dogs can follow a scent 3,000 to 3 million times beter than can humans.

Sometimes, Ms Chelin's dogs are given a piece of clothing or another personal item - known as a scent article - to help familiarize them with a person's scent before a search. She said she tries to retrieve the articles herself to avoid contaminating the scent. She uses sterilized gloves ans she won't carry the articles in just anything because they can pick up the scent of the container.

Put a shirt in a grocery bag, for example, and it smells like groceries. Drop it into a scented trashbag and "it'll smell like lilies," she said.

When a search begins, the most important factor is organization. Ms Chelin said, "You can't do it randomly. There has to be a sense of logic behind the search."

Having lots of volunteers is not as important as making sure the volunteers are trained, she said. "Without training, you are forced to depend on luck., Sometimes you have it; sometime's you don't."

Ms. Chelin said she and her dog handlers remain aware that a search area also may be a potential crime scene, so they must be careful not to destroy evidence.

Ms. Chelin. who was a police officer for 10 years, also is safety-conscious keeping an eye out for wild animals, suspects still in the area, or objects like discarded metal or barbed wire which could injure the handlers or dogs.

Almost always, weather is a problem. "You have got to assume that the elements are going to be against you." she said. Rain is especially detrimental. she said.

Rough terrain also hampers searches. In the area where the Bringsplenty chid was found, for example, a thick grove of trees masked a steep ravine, which would have been nearly invisible and very dangerous during a night search.

For that reason, Ms. Chelin seldom launches searches after the sun goes down.

"You can't see a ravine at night," she said. "You want to live to do another search."

Although many of Ms. Chelin's searches are for people who are presumed dead, she and the dogs also search for those who may still be alive.

Like John Johnson, a 60 year old Blair, NE. man, whom Ms. Cheli's dogs discovered alive in a cornfield in July. Johnson apparently became disoriented, left his pickup truck parked along Highway 75 south of Fort Calhoun, and wondered into the fields surrounding the roadway.

DeWayne Flora. Washington County Sheriff. said his deputies looked unsuccessfully for johnson for two days, even bringing in a Nebraska State Patrol helicopter to help with the search.

Ms. Chelin volunteered to help. Within a few minutes after arriving in Washington County. Ruby, Ms Chelin's bloodhound, was given an article of Johnson's clothing to sniff. A few minutes passed and the dog found the scent. Then searchers began calling Johnson's name and they heard a faint reply from the field of high corn.

"He came walking out of the corn," Flora said. The man was severely dehydrated.

"I was really impressed with the dogs that day." the sheriff said. Without their assistance at that time, the man may not have survived because he was in such a weakened state. Flora said.

"I really endorse the dogs and her operation." the sheriff said.

Successes like that helps balance out the many sad endings Ms Chelin sees, but she said she can't walk away from these cases.

"It would be real nice if nobody had to deal with the sad side of life," she said. "But we live in a pretty morbid society and I can't change that."

She said she feels that she's making a contribution by helping the families of crime victims begin the grieving process - a process that can't really happen until a body is discovered.

"A missing person is somebody's wife or husband or brother or sister. For the families of these people, it's very tough. The pain of not knowing is the most unbearable pain."

Ms. Chelin said she thinks she plays a role in helping families start putting their lives back together. That's why she ,her son, and other helpers have continued to offer their servises free of charge.

"We all have day jobs," she said. She works as a licensing examiner for the Nebraska Department of Motor Vehicles.

She said she hopes to soon file tax documents necessary to make the service a nonprofit organization. Other financial assistance comes from the Quaker Oats Co, which has been donating dog food for about a year. Ms. Chelin said Veterinarians at All Creatures Veterinary Clinic at 8626 Frederick St. also have been supportive, she said.

That support is welcome in a business that makes so many physical and emotional demands, Ms Chelin said.

Memories of the people she finds aren't easily swpet away.

Like little JJ. Bringsplety. "It was such a painful life for such a little soul. Nobody wanted him," Ms. chelin said.

The dogs feel the pain too, she said, recalling how an exhausted Pete started digging right along with searchers when they neared the spot where the little boy's body was found.

And after a search, the animal's are subdued. Ms. Chelin said.

"They know what death smells like."

More Stories coming soon!

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