BUSINESS IN THE BOX CANYON
A NEW ADVOCATE FOR HOUSING
REALTORS BRING LOCAL KNOWLEDGE, EXPERTISE TO SEARCH & RESCUE For the local realtors who volunteer for San Miguel County Search and Rescue, the satisfaction of giving back to their community is matched by the challenge and interest of taking part in search and rescue in the backcountry above and around Telluride. How challenging and interesting, you ask? How about a volunteer experience where, often as a matter of life or death, you are scaling fourteener Wilson Peak one day and dropping into San Miguel River rapids the next? Both are par for the course for SAR, which has a remit that covers about 1,200 square miles countywide and includes avalanche and backcountry searches, helicopter extractions and swift-water rescues. The group is made up of a handful of sheriff ’s deputies and a large number of volunteers. Telluride Sotheby’s International Realty broker Dan Dockray is one of those volunteers. Now a senior member with nearly 20 years on the SAR team, Dockray signed up in 2001, about a month after moving to Telluride. He said he was partly motivated by a family tradition of volunteering for emergency services back east, where he grew up. That desire to serve dovetailed with certifications Dockray had already achieved, including as a mountain guide and wilderness first responder, plus swift-water rescue, ropes training and an Avalanche Level 1 certification. “When I got to town, I called the then-director, Eric Berg, and he was very welcoming. I had the skill sets they needed. I knew my way around the mountain, I guess, and immediately I was very involved.” Dockray says that he finds search and rescue both satisfying and challenging. “It’s great to show up when all the cards are stacked against the person. And, in the rescue environment, we are problem-solving on a very large scale. It’s very cool.” After serving for 23 years on the Telluride Volunteer Fire Department, including as chief, Scott Bennett joined SAR as an associate member in August 2019, and became a full member in September 2020. Bennett, a Telluride native and broker associate at Telluride Real Estate Brokers, notes that he knew the Search and Rescue guys well, having worked with them extensively throughout his years with the TFPD. “After retiring from fire, I wanted to continue to give back to the community. Being on many calls with the folks from SAR over the years, I had an interest in search and rescue, so I reached out and started to go to trainings.” Bennett echoes Dockray in remarking that he enjoys using his skillset in a new and challenging environment. “Search and Rescue,” he says, “is very cool and very interesting.” Editor’s note: This is the first in a series on local realtors who volunteer in the community.
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On the topic of locals’ housing, David Bruce has joined the Telluride Foundation to manage its Rural Affordable Housing Initiative. The program aims to create more housing for teachers, as well as the wider local workforce. In his new role, Bruce, who recently earned a master’s from Yale in architecture and environmental management, will staff local committees and serve as a liaison between the foundation, developers and the community.
LOOKING TO LAND LOCALS The Trust for Community Housing, a local nonprofit also working to create more workforce housing in the region, has joined forces with Landing Locals, an online marketplace that qualifies potential local tenants and then matches them with property owners interested in placing their properties in the long-term rental market. It’s good news for the wider Telluride community, which, like many mountain towns, suffers from a lack of affordable long-term rentals for locals.
The local-housing marketplace for Telluride
