The Sweet Smell of Success

There comes a moment in every young bloodhound’s life when the realization dawns: It can search for someone without looking.

The hound will look around curiously, flap its jowls, and, with drool cascading, touch its nose to the ground and discover the scent trail. The moment is magic.

“It’s the big one,” said Ted Hamm, 50, a volunteer bloodhound handler who has helped law enforcement agencies for more than a decade.

For the last four years, Hamm, of Sierra Madre, has worked primarily with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department with his bloodhounds Scarlet and Knight. Recently, he has worked on several high-profile cases, including the slaying of Sandra Rosas, wife of Los Lobos singer Cesar Rosas. And last month, Hamm and his dogs searched for a missing 5-year-old in Huntington Park who later was returned by her alleged abductor. In that case, Scarlet signaled to Hamm that the trail disappeared abruptly, indicating that the girl probably had been kidnapped.

The relationship between bloodhound and handler often plays out in such signals.

For example, when Hamm and his first bloodhound, Sherlock, searched for missing people, he could always tell the moment the dog knew the abduction had turned deadly.

“He didn’t like dead people,” Hamm said. The two of them would be plodding along, when Sherlock suddenly would tuck his tail under, turn around and try to drag Hamm in the opposite direction.

Scarlet, on the other hand, has no such aversion to dead bodies. Hamm calls the dog a ghoul.

“We go in somewhere, and there’s a body and blood, and she’s as happy as can be,” he said.

For Scarlet and Knight, it doesn’t matter whether the search is for a 5-year-old or a serial murderer, as long as they get hugs, scratches and biscuits at the end, Hamm said.

Hamm estimates he donates 30 hours per week, many of them before sunrise. Since he quit a job in the medical field, he and his wife have lived on her income so he can pursue his passion.

This year, volunteer handlers and their dogs helped the Sheriff’s Department investigate nearly 300 cases, triple the number of three years ago, said Sgt. Bill Thompson of the Special Enforcement Unit.

Hamm, who owns the only bloodhounds among the Sheriff’s Department’s volunteers, has a new recruit. She is Polly, a 4-month-old bloodhound who has yet to discover what her nose can do.

As a trainee, Polly is learning the game of runaway, which involves someone’s dropping a “scent” object and running, chased by Polly. Eventually, she will associate the object with the person and learn to search even after the person has turned a corner and disappeared.

Hamm said he knows that the moment when Polly puts her nose to the ground to follow the trail is also just around the corner.

“Every dog of mine, they’ve had that moment,” Hamm said.