By John Miller
Albuquerque Journal
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Bob Rodgers once specialized in cave rescues, but since becoming resource officer for New Mexico Search and Rescue in 2011, he has shifted from navigating underground passages to analyzing data that shows, among other things, how often his teams are deployed.
The overall conclusion hasn’t changed: New Mexico’s more than 40 all-volunteer search and rescue teams are being called out less often, even as the total number of incidents requiring their services continues to rise.
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In 2023, for example, search and rescue teams responded to about 76% of 149 incidents involving people who were lost or injured in remote areas.
That rate has trended downward in recent years, despite a slight uptick last year: Teams responded to 50% of 187 incidents in 2024, 55% of 191 incidents in 2025 and just 40% of 75 incidents as of June 10 this year.
“Throughout the state of New Mexico, the volunteers are being called less and less to participate in search and rescue incidents,” Rodgers said. “Fire departments, county sheriffs, feel they can do it without us, and if they get into a problem, they’re waiting two or three hours, if not days, before they finally realize they needed SAR.”
As the law enforcement arm of the Department of Public Safety, New Mexico State Police can deploy search and rescue teams when circumstances require. But Rodgers said county and local law enforcement agencies, which are often first on the scene, can be reluctant to request state assistance.
He cited the case of retired Air Force Maj. Gen. William McCasland, who disappeared from his Albuquerque home in late February, as a recent example.
” The Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office didn’t call for search and rescue until two days after his report was overdue,” Rodgers said. “We don’t know where he’s at, and by the time we’re called in, it’s too late.”
McCasland has not been found.
Rodgers said any delay in mobilizing the proper resources for a missing person search can significantly reduce the chances of a successful outcome.
Similar concerns have surfaced elsewhere in New Mexico.
In March, Taos Search and Rescue President Delinda VanneBrightyn said the Taos County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately contact the Department of Public Safety to dispatch volunteers after two teenagers became trapped at the bottom of the Rio Grande Gorge.
“We had a very hard time getting search and rescue involved,” she said.
Taos County Sheriff Steve Miera was unavailable for comment, but he has previously said he wants to train his deputies in search and rescue techniques. For years, he and his staff have overseen responses at the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, the site of numerous suicides, as well as missing person cases in the rare instances when bodies could not be located.
Still, law enforcement can benefit from search and rescue’s specialized expertise, said VanneBrightyn, who has volunteered for more than 20 years and specializes in K-9 search and rescue.
“We should be having many more missions,” VanneBrightyn said. “The sheriffs are now doing this across the state.”
A 2025 amendment to the state Search and Rescue Act requiring first responders to notify state police when a call involves “lost, stranded, entrapped or injured persons” took effect earlier this year. But state data suggests volunteer teams continue to be underused in 2026.
In some cases, declining mission numbers have caused all-volunteer teams to lose members, as volunteers find the hours they devote to training are rarely put to use.
“It has been frustrating because the sheriff doesn’t have the resources, the trained resources that we have,” VanneBrightyn said. “They are law enforcement.”
The decline in search and rescue missions in New Mexico dates to 1996, when there were 191 missions involving 4,004 personnel and 22,602 hours in the field. Rodgers said, however, that the state’s older data is less reliable than more recent records.
Speaking to the Journal last week about the state’s ephemeral waters running dry, Grant County Search and Rescue President Russ Imler said the decline in missions may also relate to more advanced wayfinding technologies, like Garmins and smartphones.
“The electronics that people carry nowadays, people aren’t getting as lost,” he said.
Meanwhile, some studies showed that search and rescue missions rose elsewhere at the tail end of the COVID-19 pandemic. A 2021 study by a Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and a 2022 story by PBS News Hour both concluded that missions were creeping upward as more Americans re-entered the outdoors.
When search and rescue services are needed in the Land of Enchantment, Rodgers said trained teams can provide expertise law enforcement agencies usually don’t have — like advanced land navigation, wilderness survival and technical rope rescue skills.
They also often save hours of overtime pay and other public expenses accrued by paid law enforcement, he added.
“It doesn’t cost the taxpayers a whole lot of money,” he said, adding, “I can put 30 people on a mountain someplace and leave them there, and we are self-sufficient. We run at least 24 hours without support from anybody, and it costs me — the state of New Mexico — about $200 to run a mission. I’m not paying salary. I’m not giving them overtime. I’m not even providing them food.”
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