In July 1947, an 8-year-old boy drowned after falling from a dam near Whitefish. It took a team of professional divers six days to recover his body. 

The night the boy was buried, then Flathead County Sheriff Dick Walsh gathered a group of ragtag volunteers and created the Flathead Rescue and Life Saving Association. The association was incorporated as the Flathead County Search and Rescue on Feb. 7, 1950.  

“In '47 it was a bunch of good old boys going out there wanting to help,” said Bob Lee, a former president of the organization, as Flathead County Search and Rescue marks its 75th anniversary. “Now we've gotten to the point that we have real training that is based in experience and facts. And we're financed through a mill levy.” 

Two of the agency's teams cover the 5,256 square miles of Flathead County, including 158 square miles of lakes, reservoirs and rivers. The organization is based out of Kalispell and primarily handles calls in the southwestern half of the county. North Valley Search and Rescue, incorporated in 1970, operates out of Columbia Falls and covers the northeastern area.  

Search and Rescue responders are dispatched out of the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office, which employs a coordinator to organize the missions. 

“That was the funnest job I ever had,” said Sheriff Brian Heino, a former search and rescue coordinator. “Then someone talked me into running for sheriff.” 

Members of the Sheriff’s Office are grateful for the men and women who voluntarily serve on search and rescue teams, he said. It takes a special person to get up and respond to a 2 a.m. call, searching for somebody they have no personal relationship with.  

“These are amazing individuals who donate their time to help their community,” Heino said. 

FLATHEAD COUNTY Search and Rescue President Anthony Palmiotti, who joined the team five years ago, recalled feeling excited as he remembered one of his earliest missions. He couldn’t help it. 

It was a cold, wet spring day as rescuers set out to find a missing person in Glacier National Park. The man, who suffered from a medical condition, had died by the time rescuers got to him, Palmiotti said.  

“The end result wasn't what everybody hoped for, but the body was found,” Palmiotti said.  

The hardest rescue missions aren’t the ones that have a sad ending, he said. It’s the ones that don’t have an ending at all. 

Recovered bodies give families a sense of closure. Knowing what happened to a loved one allows the family to process their feelings, said Deb Sullivan, another former Search and Rescue president.  

“You can't really grieve properly when you don't have an answer,” Sullivan said. 

Rescuers personally invest in their missions, and it’s hard when those missions are unsuccessful. The cases rescuers remember most vividly are the ones that become cold cases. 

“I’m always thinking, ‘What could we have done differently?’” Lee said.  

Lee and Sullivan recalled one such mission, when rescuers failed to recover the body of a man who went duck hunting on the Flathead River. They both had a pretty good idea of where he was, but miles of submerged logs created dangerous conditions.   

The Sheriff’s Office makes the final call to end a search, but Lee remembered the victim’s family supported the decision. The county had exhausted its resources on the rescue, and things looked grim.  

Heino said it’s never easy to end a mission before the body is found, but many times it’s necessary for the safety of the rescuers.  

“There's always complexities, but our big one is safety,” he said.  

Still, some rescue missions do have a happy ending. One of Sullivan’s favorite memories was in 2017, when 25-year-old Madeline Connely and her dog were found a week after she got lost hiking in the Great Bear Wilderness near Essex. The Arizona hiker survived six days in the woods with no food, water or supplies, the Daily Inter Lake reported at the time.  

A Glacier National Park trail crew located the woman and her dog in the Spruce Creek drainage off the east side of the Middle Fork of the Flathead River, about 5 miles from her vehicle. 

“I remember getting the word over the radio that Madeline was found,” Sullivan said. “There was so much yelling and hollering in the woods. It was just such a wonderful, wonderful piece of news.” 

FIFTY-FIVE VOLUNTEERS make up the Flathead County Search and Rescue team, equipped with a wide variety of backgrounds. Applications are usually sent out at the end of the year, and the selection process, while open, is competitive. Nine out of 20 applicants made the team this year.  

“We don't need 300 people on a mission,” Palmiotti said, noting it’s costly to bring in additional members. “You need 50 who know what they're doing.”   

New volunteers go through a three-day training course sponsored by the Sheriff’s Office, where they learn the basics in search and rescue. After training, new members enter a yearlong probationary period. Their fellow volunteers vote at year’s end to make them a permanent member of the organization.  

Most volunteers have a background in skiing, mountaineering or snowmobiling, Palmiotti said. Some have specialized training in diving or operating boats in swift waters.  

But the most important skill, he said, is showing up.  

“Being willing to miss dinner and go out at night after someone you don't know, probably wouldn't like anyway ... that's the most important,” Palmiotti said. “Everything else is teachable.” 

Reporter Hannah Shields can be reached at 758-4439 or [email protected].