It was a soggy, cold late August night as more than a dozen BAYSAR volunteers gathered at the former E.W. Norman school parking lot.
On this night the crew gathered to work with North Bay Police on a rescue training exercise.
In the lot, the volunteers and police share photos of the missing person. French told the rescuers that the missing person likes to chew Excel gum and he likes snacking on Smarties.
"We set up a scenario where our target is playing the role of a person with dementia who has wandered off," explained Stan French, the longtime official with BAYSAR.
"So it's a needle in a haystack type of situation. You know that he's left and that's investigation and then expanding the search so that the police and BAYSAR together are able to eliminate areas some from the search.
The search started in the Graniteville area of North Bay and searchers entered the bush just off Sage Road as part of the search. North Bay Police also utilized a drone to assist.
"So it's a very labour-intensive type of search at an hour into the search. It's going to magically change over to Project Lifesaver search at that point, because we'll be doing an electronic search which will allow us to find the person much more quickly."
In the 30 years that BAYSAR has been in operation, its volunteers have been involved in dozens of air and ground searches in the North Bay and surrounding areas and its volunteers have earned many accolades from police forces and the Canadian military.
The North Bay Police recognize and have tremendous respect for what BAYSAR does to help in situations like this.
"We have had a long-standing relationship with Stan French and the volunteers at BAYSAR," explained Stacy Jackson, Acting Sgt. who was involved in the mock exercise as a member of the North Bay Police Service.
"They are a vital resource that we can call upon during search and rescue operations. Where we're looking for somebody, you know, that maybe they don't know they're lost, or they don't know that they're missing. There could be some mental health components to it. So the more volunteers that we can get out to assist us in its search and rescue components like that, the better."
See related: Update: Found; missing Spanish woman speaks no English
BAYSAR officials believe exercises like this are important, as just last week the two organizations worked together in a successful rescue as police and BAYSAR found a missing Spanish woman safe.
