WHO DO YOU CALL?

The timing of when Drew Clymer gets a phone call can mean the difference in life or death.

The last week of March 2023 was a particularly busy one for Clymer, the Search and Rescue Coordinator for the Vermont Department of Public Safety.

On Friday afternoon of March 24, Eric Loyer, a 31-year-old Bristol native, led police on a high-speed chase from Waterbury north on Route 100, before ditching a car he allegedly had stolen on a dead-end road in Stowe’s Nebraska Valley. As darkness fell and temperatures began to drop, Loyer disappeared on foot into deep snow in an area abutting the

Mt. Mansfield State Forest.

The following day, Saturday, March 25, Clymer got the call.

He headed to the staging area in Nebraska Valley as Stowe police resumed the search on Saturday. “In this case, the search was fairly straightforward and the police could follow Loyer’s tracks in the snow,” Clymer says. “Stowe Mountain Rescue was on alert, as were ambulances and first responders but the police found him.” Loyer was brought out alive around 2:00 pm that day and taken to a hospital before being charged with larceny.

Just a few days later, Clymer was called to help coordinate a search for Rebecca

Ball in Middlebury. Ball, a 17-year-old with autism, left an appointment in town around 4 p.m. on Wednesday, March 29 without her jacket, hat, gloves or cell phone. She was seen headed toward nearby Wright Park, a 150-acre park with trails that border the Otter Creek.

The next day Clymer got the call.

“I jumped in my car and headed to Middlebury. We searched all night,” says Clymer. “In Vermont, we are fortunate that the resources the state can bring to the table are remarkable. In such a situation I can call in search and rescue personnel from around the state, including drone teams, dive teams, Wilderness First

Responders, the Air National Guard, New England K-9 Search and Rescue and more.”

For six days, search and rescue personnel, along with state and local police, trained rescue dogs and their handlers searched the area while drones and helicopters buzzed overhead.

“We had one K-9 search and rescue team member drive from Portland, Me., with her dog to join the search,” said Clymer. “Like many of our search and rescue personnel, she was a volunteer. You literally can’t pay people to do this job – they do it out of a sense of civic duty and compassion. It’s something that in your inner core you are just called to do.”

Ball’s body was found in the park by a canine team on Tuesday afternoon, April 4. She showed no signs of self-harm or foul play.

“This was purely an accident,” Middlebury Police Chief Tom Hanley later told The Addison Independent. He noted Ball had a history of walking off. Temperatures had dropped below freezing on the first few nights she was missing and light snow had fallen.

“Our searches always find people,” says Clymer. “Often when we do, there’s a sense of exilharation when we locate them. Not with this one, though. This one

THE STATE OF SEARCH & RESCUE

was very hard,” he said quietly. Clymer still has a picture of Ball pinned to his office wall.

A Sense Of Duty

“When I started doing search and rescue, I felt like I had found the thing that I was called to do. It’s a job I truly love,” says Clymer, who moved to Vermont in 2008 and joined Stowe Mountain Rescue in 2017. When he first applied for the rescue team role, he didn’t have the specific rock climbing or medical skills that many seasoned search and rescue personnel have, but he had put in years of public service.

Clymer had been president of the Stowe Trails Partnership mountain bike club, and served on Stowe’s Development Review Board, as well as in other volunteer roles. “I just feel a sense of duty to my community. My wife calls me a ‘chronic volunteer,” he says.

Clymer was also an avid hunter, angler, mountain biker, backcountry skier and snowboarder. “There’s a rigorous process to join a search and rescue team and I loved learning every bit of it. It’s my dream job,” he says. Clymer, who has worked in project management ,says that his best skill is simply this: “I try to fix things.” Organizing, managing and communicating with various teams is key in coordinating searches.

In July 2022, Clymer, now 55, took over from Neil Van Dyke as the Search and Rescue Coordinator for the state of Vermont. Van Dyke had held the statewide position since it was created by the legislature in 2014, prompted by a tragedy.

An avid runner from Addison County, Levi Duclos, 19, was reported missing at 8 p.m. on January 9, 2012 after heading .out for a trail run that afternoon.

State troopers found Duclos’ car at the Emily Proctor trailhead in Ripton that evening but did not have the skilled personnel to conduct a backcountry search for him until the following day. Duclos body was found three miles from the trailhead. He had succumbed to hypothermia.

The statewide position was created to help coordinate searches, particularly in the backcountry, that go beyond the normal purview or skill sets of regional safety offices such as police or fire departments.

“We’re fortunate to have so many search and rescue teams throughout the state,” says Clymer. “We have the Vermont State Police, Wildernss First Responders, National Guard and the Army Mountain training school in Jericho and a half-dozen organized backcountry search and rescue teams,” says Clymer. Nearly all are staffed by volunteers. “Often, a search might involve someone in an urban or suburban setting who has simply wandered off,” Clymer adds.

A majority of Clymer’s role is to know which experts to call and when. There are teams that specialize in swiftwater rescues and in dive rescues, such as Colchester’s Technical Rescue Dive Team. Often, these specialized teams will