Staff Report</p><p>Sheriff John Anderson announced that the Madera County Sheriff's Department will once again host California's annual statewide Search & Rescue (SAR) K-9 training operation.</p><p>Madera County Search & Rescue has been collaborating with the California Rescue Dog Association (CARDA) since 2004.</p><p>The training is scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 18, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Ahwahnee Hills Regional Park.</p><p>Anderson will be on site overseeing the training operation designed to test the skills of both novice and veteran handlers in the fields of K-9 obedience, agility, directed send-out, searching, K-9 motivation, K-9 sociability as well as trailing and area problems for day and night searches.</p><p>Citizens on Patrol volunteers and Madera County Sheriff's Explorer Scouts will serve as lost subjects during this full-scale training mission.</p><p>K-9 teams participating this year include area search dogs, tracking dogs and cadaver dogs.</p><p>To make the training operation as real and as authentic as possible, all members of the Madera County Sheriff's Search & Rescue Team are participating. They will include ground-pounders, 4X4's as well as mounted posse.</p><p>Part of the training operation includes preparation for mandatory State Office of Emergency Services Certification.</p><p>Madera County Sheriff's nationally recognized Search & Rescue Team has generated a number of headlines over the years.</p><p>One mission was the catalyst for the department's nationally known program called Operation Lost and Found, which has been in operation since 2004.</p><p>In April 2003 SAR was called on to help locate a 53-year-old missing woman who had been diagnosed with the advanced stages of dementia.</p><p>During that search Anderson began counting the number of missing persons reports filed that year involving those afflicted with either dementia or Alzheimer's disease. "At that time we were averaging one missing person a month," he said.</p><p>The SAR team did not find the missing woman alive. On Nov. 22, 2003, they found her body.</p><p>Anderson successfully launched Operation Lost and Found in the spring of 2004, run by the Madera County Sheriff's Search & Rescue Team.</p><p>SAR volunteers have made it their mission to become intimately acquainted with more of these clients. In fact they not only serve those with Alzheimer's and dementia, but now children who are prone to wander as well. SAR has posted a record of nearly a dozen rescues since the adoption of the program.</p><p>In October 2004 Madera County's Search & Rescue Team received national acclaim for successfully rescuing four Bay Area men trapped in blizzardlike conditions near the Ansel Adams Wilderness.</p><p>"The desire to provide life-saving services to those in need is their sole motivation," Anderson said.