ROCKINGHAM — Kim Sharpe sat on a bench at Hitchcock Creek early Saturday afternoon waiting to be found.
Sharpe, administrative assistant with the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office, was a mock missing person during bloodhound training for law enforcement and search rescue teams.
RCSO Detective Paul McDole has been a handler for a decade and is a trainer with True Blue Bloodhounds, based out of New Jersey and helped facilitate the four-day training session last week.
The nonprofit organization provides continuing education for handlers — “show people what they can do” — and train the dogs, McDole said.
Last year, True Blue donated two bloodhounds it trained — Taurus and Posiedon — to the sheriff’s office.
Bloodhounds are instrumental in cases involving missing persons —including those with Alzheimers and dementia, autism —as well as suicide and home invasions, according to Mike Campbell, executive director of True Blue Bloodhounds. He also works with the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office in New Jersey.
“Just give the dog an article and off they go,” Campbell said. “Can’t stop them.”
The dogs involved in the training included those from the sheriff’s office and Rockingham Police Department — handled by Sgt. Dustin Cain and Deputy Travis Bowman with RCSO and Detective Lt. Larry Tunstall with RPD — as well as a search and rescue dog from Raleigh and K-9s from Minnesota, Alabama and New Jersey.
Another one of the instructors came from Baldwin County, Alabama.
“The more instructors we have that come out, the more teams we can have come out and run,” Campbell said. “It’s time consuming.”
The tracks at Hitchcock Creek were laid down on Wednesday. Since that time, it had rained and multiple people other than the role players had walked the trails.
A bloodhound sniffs out Kim Sharpe during a training session at Hitchcock Creek on March 22.
William R. Toler - Richmond Observer
Sharpe was seated downhill from one of the crossover bridges, close to the creek.
“It takes a good 30-40 minutes for your odor to settle into the ground, so the dog was just following the odor track…picked the scent up, realized there was our role player and the dog nailed it,” Campbell said.
There were several other people nearby in the area, but the bloodhound went straight to Sharpe.
“The bloodhounds are looking for one person and one person only,” Campbell said. “Whatever article you have to present to that dog, as long as it’s credible, the dog’s gonna do their job.”
The trails varied in timespan from 24 to 72 hours, McDole added, “on top of the hot trails that we’ve had to run with them to show them that you can do all this stuff, and how to set them up so they can succeed in the searches and what they’re looking for.”
In addition to the training at the creek, McDole said the dogs trained in buildings doing door searches “to be able to tell us what doors the person went through.”
Outdoor searches included the city parking lot across from IncSpace (which houses the Richmond Observer) and wooded areas near Ellerbe.
The old courthouse, where the sheriff’s office is located, was used for indoor training, with the dogs sniffing out the stairs and elevators.
“The community’s been nothing but accepting,” McDole said.
The training on Saturday for several of the dogs was interrupted for a live search in Scotland County.
“It was a good outcome,” Campbell said. “Whenever you find somebody it’s always a good outcome. That’s what it’s all about — bringing them home.”
