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Huckleberries Online

Water searchers find loved ones

The aluminum-hulled 'Kathy G.' makes its way out of the fog as owners Gene and Sandy Ralston conduct a high-tech search and recovery operation. The couple returned the bodies of two North Idaho drowning victims to their families this summer after successful searches on lakes Pend Oreille and Coeur d'Alene. (Michael Kolepp / Courtesy of the Coeur d'Alene Press)
The aluminum-hulled 'Kathy G.' makes its way out of the fog as owners Gene and Sandy Ralston conduct a high-tech search and recovery operation. The couple returned the bodies of two North Idaho drowning victims to their families this summer after successful searches on lakes Pend Oreille and Coeur d'Alene. (Michael Kolepp / Courtesy of the Coeur d'Alene Press)

Residents of her small, Wyoming town would look out on their nearby lake and see beauty, while she saw only a watery expanse that - somewhere out there -- held her loved one's remains. After all that time, this individual learned about a Kuna, Idaho, couple named Gene and Sandy Ralston, who specialized in the search and recovery of drowning victims. She contacted Ralston & Associates and they packed up their high-tech vessel to make the trip. "We found him quickly," Gene Ralston said. "And then divers were able to recover his wedding ring, his wallet, his glasses - everything." This summer, the Ralstons traveled to North Idaho and returned the bodies of two men to their families. Jeremy Heckert had been missing for three weeks when the Ralstons found him in Lake Pend Oreille on July 29. Upon hearing that the couple was in the region for that search, law enforcement officials in Coeur d'Alene asked them to assist in their efforts to find 16-year-old Reggie Nault, the former Coeur d'Alene High student-athlete who was recovered from more than 120 feet of water off of Arrow Point on Aug. 3, after two weeks of unsuccessful search attempts on the lake/David Gunter, Hagadone News Network. More here.



D.F. Oliveria
D.F. (Dave) Oliveria joined The Spokesman-Review in 1984. He currently is a columnist and compiles the Huckleberries Online blog and writes about North Idaho in his Huckleberries column.

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