US Senate honors search and rescue thanks to Yakima woman

YAKIMA, Wash. -- Five years after Marty Lentsch began working for national recognition for search and rescue personnel, the U.S. Senate has passed a resolution establishing May 16-22 as National Search and Rescue Week.

But the 60-year-old Yakima resident, a longtime mountain climber who's also a search and rescue volunteer with the Yakima County Sheriff's Office, isn't about to stop now.

She hopes the U.S. House will pass a joint resolution by next year, and she's already working toward plans for a national memorial honoring those who died during SAR duty.

The idea is to eventually create a museum that will trace the history and contributions of the varied professionals and volunteers involved with search and rescue in the United States.

That history goes back to at least January 1925, when a ranger named Herb Sortland died during a rescue mission on 14,259-foot Longs Peak in Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park, according to research done by Tim Kovacs, who directs the Central Arizona Mountain Rescue Association.

He's compiled an unofficial database of more than 500 people who have died in the U.S. during search and rescue operations -- those who perished in avalanches, drownings, plane or helicopter crashes and about 400 who were 9/11 responders . He's also formed an honor guard within the Mountain Rescue Association to provide memorial services.

It was a presentation Kovacs made at the 2005 conference of the International Mountain Rescue Association in Colorado that started Lentsch on her mission. When she discovered there was no national recognition of the unselfish efforts of SAR people who died trying to help others, she decided to rectify that shortcoming.

Lentsch wrote the proposed legislation for creating National Search and Rescue Week, and spent three years gathering letters of endorsement for the measure. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., agreed to sponsor it in Congress, and it passed the Senate unanimously Friday.

While visiting Cantwell in Washington, D.C., in 2007, Lentsch was impressed with the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial , with its walls engraved with the names of more than 18,000 who died in the line of duty. She'd like to see a similar monument created, possibly in Seattle or Portland, to honor those in SAR who died.

Lentsch, co-founder of the Yakima Climbing Club and current chair of the Washington State Mountain Rescue Association, described the initial achievement of the Senate resolution in mountaineering terms.

"From a climber's standpoint, now I've got a purchase," which means establishing a foothold or leverage, she said Tuesday. "I've got a purchase to build the further elements of the project."

Kovacs, a firefighter/paramedic who previously was a sheriff's deputy, said what Lentsch has accomplished is "fantastic" for the nationwide SAR community.

"I can't say enough about Marty," he said by phone from Arizona. "She's done something that's been a dream of mine that I haven't been able to pull off.

"She's pulling it off, and it's a wonderful thing."

The focus isn't about herself, though, Lentsch said.

"It's about raising public awareness of the contributions of search and rescue people," she said.

Yakima County has experienced the tragic loss of SAR personnel. In 1997, Yakima firefighter Rusty Hauber and Moxee volunteer firefighter Charlie Mestaz, experienced divers who were members of the county's search and rescue team, died attempting to rescue two Roza Irrigation District workers who drowned in a deep underground irrigation tunnel.