By Mary O’KEEFE

For over 70 years, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Dept. Montrose Search and Rescue team has been on call. The team members respond to emergencies primarily in the Angeles National Forest but when needed have also joined searches all over California and beyond. Members are trained for rescues on land, ice and in water. Their training is intensive and never-ending. They respond to everything from lost hikers to cars over the cliffs of the Angeles Crest Highway to even working with a paleontologist to excavate fossils from the prehistoric past. They do all of this as volunteers.

To do everything that is asked of them requires not only time and training but the right equipment. One of MSAR’s most valuable pieces of equipment is their truck. They use their truck, with the winch in the front, for racing up the Crest and hoisting members over the side, sometimes hundreds of feet, to rescue victims over the side.

“This old truck has been a real workhorse,” said MSAR team member Mike Leum.

But the truck MSAR has been using for years was actually built before some of the team members were born, and every year of rescues can be seen by the scratches on its sides and in the rumble of its engine. Knowing the old truck had limited trips remaining up the Crest, in 2014 Leum applied for and received a grant from the Ahmanson Foundation on behalf of MSAR. After years of working on and testing this specialized truck, it is now officially ready for all callouts.

“The new truck is replacing the 1987 truck, which we all loved but it has outlived its service,” Leum said.

To build a truck with the unique qualities required by MSAR is not easy, nor cheap. The cost is about $200,000.

“Without the Ahmanson Foundation, we could not have done this,” Leum added.

The Ahmanson Foundation historically has had a strong interest in supporting those in emergency preparedness and disaster relief.

“This [truck] could help people who are having the worst day of their life,” said Bill Ahmanson, president of the Ahmanson Foundation.

Ahmanson is a retired Los Angeles Police Dept. reserve officer and, after leaving the force for a while, is now training to go back in.

“I am back at the [police] academy,” Ahmanson said. “I am going back to the field … I have missed it every day.”

He knows well what it means to get to a victim quickly and to have the right equipment that works in harmony with emergency responders.

“I understand if the truck breaks down the rescue is delayed,” Ahmanson said.

And those few minutes, even seconds, can be precious to the victim, he added.

The Ahmanson Foundation was incorporated in 1952 and, according to the Foundation website, “The grantmaking has evolved to meet the challenges of a Los Angeles far more complex than it was in 1952, the simple principle of building community for the common good remains a constant anchor.”

The focus on law enforcement is a direct effort by the Ahmanson Foundation to help those who serve others.

“[Law enforcement, specifically LAPD,] is unreasonably underfunded by city government,” Ahmanson added.

The funding for the truck is appreciated by the MSAR, said Leum.

Just moments after the photograph was taken of the truck, it went into service as the team was activated to a car that had plummeted 200 feet over the side of Big Tujunga Canyon Road.

The new truck has been tested and with its front winch can go right to the edge of a cliff and lower a team member or rescue litter over the side. The old truck did its job, but was having more breakdown days than operational days.

“The timing [of the truck] was perfect,” Leum said.

  Mary Okeefe