Search and Rescue Volunteers of Monterey County

ΞLOCALHEROSΞ

Lady has not become a hero by the power of her profound selflessness. She is not into search and rescue for the glory. And no, she doesn’t track down people like the Salinas man who went missing for 36 hours to please her owners. She’s in it for the tennis balls.

“A lot of people think Lady is searching out of some humanitarian reason,” says Monty Reitz, who first started training the 6-year-old golden retriever in search and rescue about five and a half years ago. “From her training, she just thinks that person she’s looking for has her favorite toy.”

When an Alzheimer’s-clouded Gilberto Urango of Salinas wandered off from the Veteran’s Administration Clinic on the former Fort Ord in 2005, Lady and Reitz started at the East Garrison gate near Reservation Road in Marina, searched the whole area, turned on Davis Road, kept looking, and ultimately found the 77-year-old veteran at the Merrill Ranch by the Salinas River. Lady’s sharp, leaping bark brought Reitz to the spot where Urango sat.

Reitz asked if he was Gilberto Urango. He matter-of-factly replied, “Of course,” and Lady got her beloved tennis ball. At home, her owners, Jim and Sharon Lacalamita of Salinas, honored her effort with an indulgent second ball.

Like true hero material, Lady surrounds herself with other heroes. Reitz, a former Army infantryman and public school teacher, has been voluntarily training search and rescue dogs for 20 years, completing 173 searches along the way and helping inspire the Monterey County Sheriffs Department to expand their roster of search and rescue dogs from zero (in 1995) to five. Jim is a magnanimous backer of and volunteer chief for the Sheriff’s Emergency Assistance Team (which led him on the search missions where he met Reitz); his steady volunteerism and prodigious charity work earned him a Jefferson award from the American Institute for Public Service earlier this year.

Jim, Sharon and Reitz all sacrifice striking amounts of time and personal investment to contribute to the emergency response network— and are constantly prepared to respond to a call anywhere in the Central California region at any time.

The three are the first ones to say that it’s Lady’s drive that separates her from normal dogs.

“We have to differentiate between energy and drive when identifying search dogs,” says Reitz. “Energy has no basic meaning— the dog will run around a lot, and do what you want for a while. Drive means the dog will use that energy to do what you teach it to do— and do it over and over for a 10-to 12-hour day.”

To become a certified search and rescue dog with the state’s Office of Emergency Services, Lady had to locate three different individuals hidden on 150 acres of varying topography in less than four hours time. Lady did it in two hours and 40 minutes.

“She’s a pet 99 percent of the time, but put that vest on, and she’s a different dog,” says Reitz. “She doesn’t stop doing her rights and lefts [search patterns]— she just continues going.”

“You should see her sometimes when she comes back from a search,” Jim says, “just dirty— filthy— muddy, with all kinds of stuff stuck to her.”

For the record, the charismatic canine even begets other heroes: A number of her 18 offspring are already part of the law enforcement family. “One of her [litter] is in training for search and rescue,” Sharon says, “and a lot of them are owned by local officers and sheriffs.”

As talk of her accumulating accomplishments and adorable disposition echo around Jim’s office at Peninsula Communications, Lady’s admiration society beams. Lady, however, doesn’t seem too taken by all the talk. She remains content to accept pats on the head— and the opportunity to drift into a daytime reverie revolving around a tennis ball.