Mountain Search-and-Rescue Project Saves Lives--and Youthful Offenders

Sometimes it takes a dramatic encounter with nature to jolt and redirect the life of a young man caught in a relentless cycle of drugs, crime and juvenile hall.

Like spending a freezing night stuck at the bottom of a 450-foot wilderness canyon, next to the body of a young man you had been sent to rescue.

Or finding the boot of a climber who’d been lost for six days in the frigid Yosemite National Park high country--a clue that led to the saving of a man’s life.

Trained in Survival

Such are the possibilities for self-discovery generated by the unusual Mountain Public Service Program in Stockton, where youthful offenders incarcerated by the California Youth Authority become survival-trained search-and-rescue experts.

When Chuck Sipes, a veteran Youth Authority program director and accomplished body builder, last year proposed sending an elite corps of court wards into the wilderness on search-and-rescue missions, some viewed the idea as little more than an opportunity for young felons to go camping--and perhaps escape in the process.

Sipes, 54, a lean and grizzled former Mr. America, Mr. World and Mr. Universe, had nothing of the sort in mind.

Having spent 12 years taking young parolees through wilderness “rites of passage” and finding that 87% of his charges successfully handled their freedom, Sipes figured that a similar experience might work for minors still confined to the bleak and overcrowded quarters of the Youth Authority.

“Most of these young men have never been into the wilderness,” Sipes said. More critically, he added: “These kids have never accomplished anything in their lives. . . . They’ve neeer felt important in their lives. I don’t care who it is, if you show them some respect, show them that they can do something worthwhile, they’ll pay attention.”

Sipes discussed the idea with Youth Authority Project Director Gary Maurer, who wrote a $65,000 federal grant proposal for a two-month, 160-hour intensive training program. The plan, once controversial, has been so successful in its first year that the state has agreed to continue funding it.

Not just any offender is accepted into the rigorous training regime. The program accepts only volunteers, willing to put in weekend and evening hours of hard physical exercise, to take a full program of regular classroom instruction and to learn the techniques of tracing clues and administering first aid.

Twenty wards at a time are accepted for training, all of them “short-timers” with about six months left to serve on their sentences. Anybody with a recent history of assault, arson or failing grades in Youth Authority classes is rejected.

Parole Violators

“About half of the trainees are parole violators, most of them for substance abuse problems,” Maurer said. “The other half are thieves, in on car theft, burglary, those kinds of things.”

About a third drop out or are dismissed from the search-and-rescue program because of its tough physical requirements or because they can’t cope with the rigid, military-style discipline it requires.

Because the trainees, once graduated, participate in wilderness rescue missions headed by county sheriffs’ departments, wards in the program must learn to deal cooperatively with authority figures in a way completely foreign to many of them.

“When we say (during a search mission), ‘Get your ass up here,’ we can’t have a guy complexing on us,” Maurer said.

Those who do survive the training and take part in rescue missions say it has caused them to change their views about life, other people and their own abilities.

Some of the program’s 60 graduates recently sat in a cramped Youth Authority office, wearing brown search-and-rescue team jump-suits with prized new yellow T-shirts. They enthusiastically described what the program has meant to them.

The very fact that the Latino, black and white wards were sitting in the same room sharing deeply personal stories was remarkable at the Stockton detention facility, where racial tension is common. But they had shared canteens, crawled through the brush, searched for people found dead and alive--”life-changing experiences,” as Sipes described it.

Travis Johnson, 19, a tall and serious Oakland youth with a history of drug problems, said life-saving missions have helped him learn to “love and care for others.”

“The things I used to do--argue with people, tell somebody, ‘---- you, you ain’t nothing’--I don’t do anymore,” he said quietly. “I’ve learned to handle my business the way a man’s supposed to.”

A 17-year-old who is one of 13 children, Johnson said his goal before the program was to become a carpenter. Now he’s inquiring about premed programs at several colleges.

James Prentice, a 20-year-old father of two from Lodi, described a life of partying, drugs and farm labor. “I really didn’t have any goals for myself,” he admitted. “Now I want to try to go to college and get any job that has to do with forestry.”

Sipes smiled. “The payoff for us,” he said, “is to see the change.”