To The Rescue Search-And-Rescue Director John Taylor Keeps One Thing In Mind: To Help People

John Taylor was only a teenager when he made his first rescue.

The call came on July 4, 1961. A woman climbing a steep hillside in the Monte Cristo area with her husband and two sons had been struck by a tumbling rock that shattered her leg.

The Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office was in charge of the rescue and it called on the 17-year-old who worked as a jack-of-all-trades at the Monte Cristo lodge and knew the surrounding hills better than anyone.

“I knew the country,” said Taylor, who is now director of the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office Search and Rescue. “That was my old stomping grounds. I explored all around there.”

With Taylor’s help, the woman was rescued. And from that moment on, he was hooked.

“I found it very exciting,” Taylor said. “I liked the feeling that it gave me to help somebody. So I made up my mind I was going to find a job where I could do something like that and get paid for it. Somehow I pulled it off.”

More than 30 years and hundreds of rescues later, Taylor recently received the 1996 state Search and Rescue Award.

It’s not the first major award for Taylor and probably won’t be his last. The list of Taylor’s accomplishments in the field of search and rescue seems as long as the list of missions he has coordinated since he first began in 1973.

Taylor joined the sheriff’s office in 1968, the day after the clean-cut 23-year-old left the Army, and spent nearly five years working in the warrant and traffic division.

At that time, the sheriff’s office didn’t have a search-and-rescue group, so Taylor and his co-workers were called to go on rescue missions. His division was the only one in the sheriff’s office that could drop its work and look for lost people, Taylor said.

During the next few years he found ways to get equipment, including helicopters, for the sheriff’s office, said Tom Barr, a helicopter pilot who has worked with Taylor since 1973 and considers him one of his best friends.

“There’s nobody else that knows how to get equipment, like he does, from the military,” Barr said. “He’s known worldwide. No matter where you go in search and rescue, they know him.”

Taylor’s resourcefulness came in handy when he wanted to get his pilot’s license. One of his dreams was to be a fighter pilot, he said. But less than perfect eyesight kept him from that goal.

During a stay in New York, he met up with officials from the New York Police Department. They began comparing notes about whose department had the most equipment. When the NYPD found out the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office had a Huey helicopter and they didn’t, they were impressed.

They were even more impressed with Taylor when he helped arrange for them to get two Hueys of their own and then taught their special weapons and tactical team members how to rappel from them. In exchange, they taught Taylor to fly and gave him enough flight time to get his license. Taylor had to make the trip back there three times to rack up enough flight time.

“When he sets his mind to do something, he’ll do it,” said Dianne Duffy, who has been with the search-and-rescue team since 1980. “He’ll figure out a way.”

For instance, there was the diabetic Boy Scout who had forgotten to take his insulin, and couldn’t be awakened one morning at a camp near Glacier Peak, Taylor recalled. A camp leader hiked for at least six hours to Darrington and called for help. Taylor knew the boy didn’t have much time. If he followed the camp instructor back, it would take at least six hours, so he got directions and flew there himself.

“I took the chance,” Taylor said. “I bet this kid’s life on it. I knew I could find him with a direct shot.”

Later, Taylor learned from doctors that the boy would have died if Taylor had been just an hour later.

“There’s something about him,” Duffy said. “He has a sixth sense about situations.”

“He’s never one to blow his own horn,” Duffy added. ‘But he would do anything if someone needed help.”

Duffy remembered a mission in the early 1970s in which two young brothers were stranded at Boulder Rock near Sultan during a Snohomish River runoff. Taylor worked his way toward the boys. Much to his horror, one of them let go before Taylor could grab his hand. But the other brother held on, Duffy said.

Taylor stayed with the youngster, “all night long, rubbing his arms, at (Taylor’s) own detriment. By the time (Taylor) got out, his body temperature was in the low-90s - hypothermic stage,” Duffy said.

Taylor received a presidential citation from President Richard Nixon for saving the boy’s life.

Taylor’s leadership skills are just as strong as his lifesaving skills and resourcefulness, co-workers said.

Although Taylor has the final word on a rescue mission, he asks others what they think, Barr said.

And he’s always respectful of the volunteers, said Paul Moutray, who has been with the group for 16 years.

“He’ll never ask you to go into something you’re not comfortable doing,” Moutray said.

One thing Taylor isn’t comfortable doing is talking about retirement. Barr said he doesn’t even know when Taylor might retire. But whenever he decides to, he’ll leave behind some pretty big shoes to fill.

“I’d hate to see him retire because there’s nobody who can replace him,” Barr said. “He’s something you only see once or twice in a lifetime.

“He’s been it.”