PEORIA —Without certified search and rescue personnel, the Peoria County Sheriff’s Department was unable to launch a search and rescue team when Peoria resident John Garrett, a 73-year-old man who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, was reported missing in February.

At about 2:45 p.m. February 12, Garrett walked away from his home on the 5800 block of North Koerner Road in Peoria. When Peoria County emergency personnel and volunteers were unable to locate Garrett, certified search and rescue personnel from throughout the state were called in, leading to one of the largest search efforts in the history of the State of Illinois. Search and rescue personnel covered about 30 square miles on foot and horse, and in a helicopter, before Journal Star reporter Matt Buedel found Garrett’s body five-and-a-half miles from his home in a rocky area of Jubilee Creek not far from the West Fussner Road crossing in Jubilee College State Park, a week after he was reported missing.
According to an autopsy and readings from his pacemaker, Garrett likely drowned the first night after he was reported missing.
The Peoria County Sheriff’s Department had considered forming its own certified search and rescue team before the Garrett tragedy.
“The Garrett incident brought it to the forefront,” said Peoria County Sheriff Mike McCoy. “We decided it was time to put one together.”
Illinois Search and Rescue (ISAR) trained and certified auxiliary police from the Peoria County Sheriff’s Department and public safety personnel in May. They trained a second group of auxiliary police and public safety personnel in July at Summer Park, the same area where the Garrett search took place. Currently, the Peoria County Sheriff’s Department has 37 trained and certified search and rescue volunteers.
“We don’t use it very often, but the need is definitely there,” said McCoy.
Members of the public who want to volunteer their services for the search and rescue team can attend future ISAR training sessions. Applications are available at the Peoria County Sheriff’s Office, 301 N. Maxwell Rd., Peoria.
“If we get some public people we will run background checks on them and see if we can accept them,” said McCoy. “It is all volunteer work. We hope nobody needs us, but we’re going to expand it down the road anyway and get a few more people in.”
The basic ISAR training session lasts a minimum of 16 hours over two days with four hours of overall classroom education. The remaining portions of the training session are spent in the field learning land navigation skills and search techniques. In addition to looking for missing people, ISAR trains teams to look for items that police may need as evidence in cases.
Certified Peoria County search and rescue volunteers that attended the first ISAR training session in May participated in a search for a man with Alzheimer’s disease in Douglas County in June and were instrumental in helping find him alive.
“We helped them in Douglas County when they had a guy missing, but that’s all we’ve done,” said McCoy.
The Peoria County Sheriff’s Department is investigating how to implement technology that could track missing people with Alzheimer’s disease should someone get lost. The system, which is being sought with the support of the Alzheimer’s Association, generally consists of a transmitter that can be worn and a unit that can detect it from miles away.
The Alzheimer’s Association is going to hold an informational meeting on the tracking system next month. Still to be determined on the topic of tracking systems for those with Alzheimer’s disease is the funding and determination of who will be responsible for distributing and maintaining the transmitters.