SO THAT OTHERS MAY LIVE: Caroline Hebard and Her Search-and-Rescue Dogs

For over 20 years, Hebard has devoted much of her time to saving people's lives as part of a human-canine volunteer rescue team. This is her inspirational, often heartrending tale, cowritten with Whittemore (Find the Magician!, 1980, etc.). Hebard is one of the pioneers in this type of rescue work. Her earliest cases involve finding hikers and children lost in the woods, as well as missing elderly people--all in the proximity of her suburban New Jersey home. Working with her personally trained German shepherds--she's had several different faithful partners over the years--her growing reputation eventually leads her to be called upon to find victims after various national and foreign disasters: earthquakes in Mexico City and Armenia, hurricane Hugo in South Carolina, and most recently, the bombing at the Oklahoma City federal building. Rescue missions are grueling and dangerous, often requiring that both human and canine partners climb over and through piles of rubble and debris in order to get inside collapsed buildings where survivors might be located. It is often grim work as well; more often than not, Hebard must mark the locations of dead bodies her team has found. Her return home from missions is often difficult psychologically, since she must quickly switch gears from rescue worker to wife and homemaker for her physicist husband and four children. Currently a co-leader of the US Disaster Team Canine Unit, Hebard is dedicated to improving the performance of canine search-and-rescue teams; between missions, she conducts symposiums in her field, emphasizing the importance of love and trust between human and canine partners. Compelling reading, but because of all the disaster-site details, not for the squeamish.