The hard AND UNEMOTIONAL slog of SAR

As a scaled back search continued for Thomas Phillips and his children, Jayda Jin, 8, Maverick, 6, and Ember, 5, after their disappearance a fortnight ago from Kiritehere Beach, search and rescue leader Senior Constable Barry Shepherd said he had noticed a distinct change in those lost in his three decades in LandSAR in the Central Plateau.

New technology – Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons (EPIRB) and the Global Positioning System (GPS) – has seen to that.

‘‘You’d come up to April and the roar, and you’d be out looking for lost hunters, but now it’s not the case. A few hunters still get lost when their batteries go flat, or they don’t trust their tools.’’

But, other than rescues for those having accidents, searches now were mostly for the disaffected or cognitively impaired – such as those suffering Alzheimer’s, he said.

‘‘One of the challenges around the cognitively impaired is that we need to go back and search places already searched because if they are mobile there is potential for them to go back into those areas.’’

Those who didn’t want to be found, or didn’t seem to care, could also throw the odd curveball, though.

The silver-haired Shepherd wraps his arms around his torso and leans back languidly in his interview room chair.

‘‘Years ago there was a fellow who came out of the Waipakihi River heading back towards the Desert Road, and he got lost, reported overdue, and he turned up four days later.

‘‘We had quite a significant search for him, and he’d seen us looking for him but didn’t help us to help him. He turned up on the Desert Rd and after four days he said ‘well, what’s the big fuss?’’’

Tragically, things didn’t work out so well for Matiu Ngaronoa, 26, and Vincent Taurima, 21, who in August 2017 ditched a stolen car after a Police pursuit and fled into Tongariro National Park’s thick bush.

‘‘They wanted to be found, but they didn’t want us to find them . . . and they then got in a bit deeper than they hoped,’’ said Shepherd.

Early on while the incident was pursuit more than rescue, the unsighted two were even in voice contact with the Police before clamming up.

Their bodies were found four weeks later.

After the incident both whanau made complaints to the Independent Police Conduct Authority which ruled there was no evidence to suggest the men’s ethnicity and the gang connections of one meant Police overstated risks and did not put a full effort into the search.

The authority found some missed opportunities in the early stages, but could not say they would have changed the outcome.

‘‘We bent over backwards during that operation to include them and our relationship with iwi really grew exponentially over that time,’’ said Shepherd, ‘‘local iwi went out of their way to help us communicate with the visitors.’’

In fact eventually they gave visiting friends and family of the lost two a ‘‘tune up’’ about rubbish left behind and even some gumboots and clothes that then had to be eliminated as belonging to the two men, he said.

In general, including family and friends in search and rescue teams was problematic, Shepherd said.

‘‘We’ve made the mistake years and years ago of allowing them in one or two of our teams, and they become a liability because they will rush off on a tangent. They are not trained search and rescue people for starters, and then you spend a lot of energy managing them.’’

Getting emotional puts others at risk as well as meaning your efficiency could wane, he said.

Certainly, to the outsider, Shepherd’s default facial expression can seem a bit steely, but it’s born of the job.

‘‘Emotional ownership is not my prerogative. And anyone who says they are getting emotionally attached to this probably should take a look at themselves and take a bit of a break because that family isn’t my family, it’s my job to be professional.

‘‘People say to me ‘oh Barry you’re passionate about search and rescue’ and I say ‘no I’m not, policing is my profession and search and rescue is my specialty’ . . . It’s our responsibility to be professional.’’

Family knowledge to ascertain intentions and mental state was important, he said, but that was the job of investigators at any search, ‘‘talking to family, getting some insight into people to find out what makes them tick.’’

Though the end of a search could see a relaxation of being a bit aloof, such as after the retrieval of an Indian national from the Tongariro Crossing in October 2018 who froze to death after becoming separated from three relatives.

‘‘We’re pretty well-connected to

Tu¯ wharetoa around here, and we all get engaged in each other’s business when it comes to search and rescue . . . the spirituality of the maunga. That was quite an emotional gathering at the Mangatepopo car park because all the agencies were there and the family of the guy who’d died, his wife ... That was pretty intense for a lot of us, but that’s okay – the job was finished by then. We’d retrieved his body and that didn’t influence what we did to get him out.’’

But a lack of closure on open-ended cases could still gnaw away at the dispassionate search and rescue leader.

‘‘I think there are a lot of people with unfinished business. And we’ve got a few jobs here.’’

He reeled off a string of missing persons who were now just a last sighting.

‘‘Robert Lees, from Acacia Bay, 15 years ago, used to go out at lunchtime every day for a walk, went out that day and never came back . . .

‘‘Francesca Martin, she was last seen at what’s now the roundabout at Wairakei. Never found anything of hers.

‘‘Leighton Grant, who seemingly swam out to Motutaiko Island, never found him.

‘‘A Russian fellow called Artoi Malikov . . . but he might have tried to fake his disappearance. We found a whole lot of stuff, he seemingly crashed his car, but the seatbelt had been cut, not broken.

‘‘He will possibly turn up somewhere someday, but there are half a dozen around here that were never found.’’

Nevertheless, for Shepherd, job satisfaction comes from leading a good team.

‘‘Not each of us can do everything, but you all play a part and support each other.

And one day, techniques he has learned from his role with the Police National Disaster Victim Identification team may yet be pressed into service if one of these cases turns up.

Over 15 years, that involvement has taken him to Thailand, the Solomon Islands, Australia, and the Netherlands, helping forensically identify New Zealanders involved in various disasters.

It has also seen him in Christchurch following the mosque attacks and after the city’s earthquakes, involved with the Carterton balloon crash and the 2019 White Island eruption.

Once again a professional distance comes through, though the 63-year-old Shepherd can still talk as enthusiastically as a research student just starting out on a career path.

‘‘The DVI stuff is fascinating . . . a lot of it is forensic, it’s dental, we also apply a lot of the processes to single non-visually identifiable deaths . . .

‘‘People say to me how do you deal with all this death and destruction and I say well the emotional ownership isn’t mine… There was a Japanese man in his 60s, bicycle touring around New Zealand. For eight days he was lying dead in his tent in Turangi, you can imagine . . .

‘‘But that’s really interesting, people say it must be a bit gruesome but as I say we’re doing it for the living and the search and rescue stuff that’s taken me all over the place, I have worked with lots of people.

‘‘There’s a lot of satisfaction because it’s part of policing that is great for the profile of police.

‘‘No one complains when the firemen turn up do they? But often people complain when we turn up.’’