As kids and parents wandered between booths during a block party at the Durango Hills Community Center in the northwest Las Vegas Valley on a recent afternoon, Red Rock Search and Rescue volunteers had a simple message for them.
If you get lost, hug a tree and stay put.
Volunteers know they’ll never learn whether those conversations prevent someone from needing to be rescued. But that’s the point.
“It’s hard to find a moving target,” Robbie Brown, Red Rock Search and Rescue captain of community outreach, said. “If people stay put, we can go find them. So you never know how many lives are saved from that message they get.”
Preventing emergencies before they happen has become just as important to Red Rock Search and Rescue as finding people after they’re lost.
Founded in 2012, Red Rock Search and Rescue is a nonprofit with nearly 200 volunteers. Each must complete 60 hours of service annually to remain part of the organization, according to Commander Mark Speer.
The group is certified by the National Association of Search and Rescue and the Mountain Rescue Association, which provides training standards recognized by state, regional and federal search and rescue authorities.
Speer said volunteers serve as force multipliers, or added resources to aid authorities in search and rescue efforts in Southern Nevada and areas in neighboring states. The group does not conduct active climbing or water rescues but does help local police, the National Park Service and other authorities with searches for people who are missing or presumed dead.
In addition to search and rescue operations and the group’s community outreach efforts, volunteers with the group often post up outside many of Southern Nevada’s most popular trails. It’s a practice known as preventative search and rescue, or PSAR.
In a place like Southern Nevada, where extreme heat and rugged terrain can surprise even the most experienced outdoors enthusiasts, providing water or trail advice might not seem as glamorous as helicopter or swift-water rescues. But it saves lives and emergency resources, National Park Service spokesman Maxwell Dotson said in a video call.
“That’s what most of search and rescue is, and Red Rock SAR performs that thankless function day in and day out, providing an invaluable service to our community,” Dotson said of PSAR. “There are truly an untold number of lives saved from that activity.”
‘Enough to keep us busy’
Beyond preventative search and rescue efforts, Red Rock Search and Rescue has teams specializing in off-road search, aerial drone operations, footprint interpretation and urban bike and mountain bike searches, Speer said. The organization also has teams that provide emotional and practical support to loved ones of missing people as well as dog teams that assist with tracking and human-remains detection.
In recent years, Red Rock Search and Rescue volunteers have assisted with searches for a man who was killed after being swept into a wash at Wetlands Park, a Pahrump horse veterinarian’s body recovered at Lake Mead, a teen found dead in a desert area in Henderson and other high-profile cases.
The group has assisted with more than 50 searches so far this year, including several for a missing Australian woman, Sally Grace Contarino, who was reported last seen in the Mount Charleston area in June, according to Speer.
That compares with 77 searches in 2025. Speer said volunteers had logged about 20,000 hours cumulatively as of late July. By comparison, volunteers last year logged about 30,500 hours and 28,700 in 2024.
Speer said his group is often tapped by police departments across the Las Vegas Valley and the Clark County coroner’s office to help search for missing people or remains.
“Those calls usually go to the agency having jurisdiction and to the coroner,” Speer said. “The coroner will go out and look, or the actual agency will take the bone to the coroner and then they’ll call us. But it happens enough right now that there’s enough to keep us busy.”
Speer continued: “Sometimes it takes multiple searches to find what we call a bone field. We have been trained by the coroner’s office on how to collect that. We also bring anthropologists from UNLV to confirm and look at them. And then we collect the bones, as long as they’re old, and we bag them, mark them, and then we take them to the coroner when we’re done.”
Occasionally, search teams looking for a specific target find unrelated remains, Speer said.
“It’s what we call unintended finds,” Speer said. “Which are maybe people who have passed away or have been murdered and dropped out in the middle of the desert.”
Whatever the case, searching for remains can be meticulous work, Speer said.
Metropolitan Police Department Sgt. Matthew Marlow coordinates the department’s search and rescue unit. He said Red Rock Search and Rescue provides valuable on-the-ground support when needed.
Metro’s Search and Rescue Section consists of seven officers and about four dozen volunteers who specialize in areas including rope rescues, diving searches and swift-water rescues and emergency medical treatment, Marlow said.
“By having Red Rock Search and Rescue, it allows Metro to field the helicopters or the ground teams that are trained specifically in rope access, high-end, low-angle rope access, or helicopter operations in order to get to these patients and folks that are injured,” Marlow said. “It would be more difficult for us to do our job without Red Rock Search and Rescue.”
Speer said he and others at Red Rock Search and Rescue have recently begun coordinating with Metro to provide support services for large public gatherings on the Strip, including concerts and sporting events.
“In case there’s any kind of mass casualty event, we can act as a force multiplier like we do out in the desert, in the city when we’re looking for Alzheimer’s, dementia and exigent circumstance people that are missing,” Speer said. “We can be eyes and ears, looking in the crowd for people who have heat-related injuries until medics come by.”
‘It’s not a job to us because we love it’
Speer, the fifth commander in the organization’s history, said two concerns keep him up at night.
The first is losing a volunteer while searching for a missing person. That, Speer said, has thankfully never happened.
The other is ensuring Red Rock Search and Rescue is in a better financial position than when he took over.
Speer said Red Rock Search and Rescue has agreements with 15 local, state and federal entities to provide volunteer resources at no charge. He added that the group operates on a budget of about $60,000 a year, which is sourced largely through grants and donations.
Volunteers must complete 20 hours of introductory training, which counts toward their annual service-hour requirement, Speer said. Volunteers must supply many items on their own, such as hiking boots, cargo pants, jackets and shirts, first aid equipment and other supplies, which can cost $500 to $1,000.
Training classes are introduced once or twice a year depending on demand, Speer said. The most recent class brought 38 new volunteers into Red Rock Search and Rescue.
Speer said membership has grown steadily ever since he can remember joining the group. With a greater supply of volunteers than in recent years, the group can offer PSAR demonstrations at local schools and community centers. Speer said the group is on track to do about 100 events this year.
Volunteering is open to anyone, but those who have “SAR heart,” which Speer defined as an inherent need to help the community, are usually the ones who stick around the longest, Speer said.
“The ones that have the SAR heart deep in their soul, helping people, they don’t burn out,” Speer said. “They just find time to help.”
Speer’s sales pitch to those interested in joining is simple: Red Rock Search and Rescue is gratifying for those who find meaning in volunteer service and brings together professionals from across the Las Vegas Valley.
“We have a very diverse membership,” Speer said. “Everything from a nuclear physicist down to mechanics … and everything in between: law enforcement, EMT people, retired firemen and nurses.”
Speer joined the group in 2022 after retiring as a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy.
Volunteering started out as a way to stay active, but Speer quickly became captivated by the work.
“There’s a lot of us who have hundreds, some of us have almost 1,500 hours,” Speer said. “It’s not a job to us because we love it.”
At 71, Speer is unsure how much longer he will command Red Rock Search and Rescue but said he is happy to remain in his position for the foreseeable future.
“I’m going to do it as long as I can physically and as long as I don’t have to leave for other reasons, but it’s an amazing team,” Speer said. “I couldn’t do what I do without my command staff. All of our leaders on the team train and teach so selflessly.”
Contact Casey Harrison at charrison@reviewjournal.com. Follow @Casey_Harrison1 on X.
