Big winner: Big Horn County SAR wins top Land Rover Defender Service Award

Members, supporters and family members of the Big Horn County Search and Rescue squad nervously gathered for a watch party at the Lovell Community Center Saturday night, waiting on pins and needles for the announcement of the Defender Service Awards being broadcast from Temecula, California.

The Big Horn County squad was one of two finalists for the top Defender Service Awards sponsored by Land Rover and Chase with a chance to win $30,000 and a new Land Rover 130.

There were originally five semifinalists in the Search, Rescue and Emergency Support Services division, and Big Horn SAR was one of the two finalists selected by an online voting process. The other finalist was a SAR squad from Custer, South Dakota.

The telecast live streamed to the watch party at the community center first covered a pair of other categories, and then came the Search, Rescue and Emergency Support Services announcement: Big Horn County.

As the announcement was made, people leapt to their feet, fists thrust high, screaming in delight, then hugged one another. South squad captain Jeff Schmidt appeared on the screen and expressed thanks to the organizers and sponsors, as well as those who voted for and have supported the Big Horn County squad.

He was then presented a display check by JLR (Jaguar Land Rover) North American Brand Director for Defender and Discovery Paula Gharizi and Pelican Products CEO James “JC” Curleigh. Pelican is a major sponsor of the Defender Service Awards.

North Captain Wes Mangus then addressed the audience to express his thanks to Morgan DuFort, who ramrodded the Defender Service Awards effort for Big Horn County SAR and has also performed a lot of grant writing for the squad.

Mangus estimated that more than 100 people attended the watch party.

Elation abounds

Mangus was still walking on Cloud 9 Tuesday morning as he discussed the game changing prize.

“I was just blown away. I didn’t think we’d even have a shot at the top two,” he said. “I mean, we were the smallest county out of the top five. Out of that whole group, we were the smallest county, smallest budget.

“It was all based off of the public voting. We had a huge following. We had people voting in Mississippi. We had people voting in New York, all over the place, which was really nice. And I know Jeff Schmidt met a handful of people on the fire that he was on. He’s on a rescue team for the forest fires, and he met a bunch of people that started voting for us that he just got to visiting with.”

Land Rover has not released the voting totals, and Mangus said neither he nor Schmidt had any idea who the top winner would be until the moment of the announcement.

“It was a total surprise. They never said anything. It was pretty cool,” he said.

He did have an inkling that the second-place winner would not come away empty-handed, figuring the sponsors wouldn’t fly both finalists to California if there wasn’t something to be awarded to the runners-up. And indeed, that was the case as each second-place winner received $15,000.

Big Horn County had already been awarded $5,000 for being a finalist, and winning the $30,000 prize plus a Land Rover Defender with an estimated value of some $80,000 means the Big Horn County squad has netted about $115,000 from the Defender Service Awards plus nearly $36,000 from recent local fundraising efforts.

Mangus said the new Defender will likely be housed in the south end of the county for various reasons.

“It’s not officially been developed, but Jeff and Morgan on the south (squad) started working on this before we merged officially, and they’re short a vehicle, so it just makes sense,” Mangus said, “and in all honesty, for us on this end, we need a diesel truck to pull the mountain with.

“They have the Cloud Peak (Wilderness) down there, and so they do a lot more personnel transport to start hiking. They can put eight people in there and go to Battle Park and start hiking from there, and so that’s super-efficient for them. For us, we need something we can run the mountain with, pull a trailer with (room to) put stuff in.”

Of course, it will all be up to the Search and Rescue Foundation board, Mangus said, but he believes some of the recent fundraising money could be used to purchase the needed diesel truck.

“We’ll discuss it at our meetings in the coming months and come up with a plan,” he said. “I talked to the officers on our end, and we’re gonna sit down and kind of put together a wish list, if you will, of what would be the most efficient thing to take care of with that money that we will get the biggest benefit out of. And I know Morgan on the south end has written I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands worth of grants in the last eight months.

“She’s done amazing things. I mean she’s just running with this grant thing. She’s put in for a lot of items, smaller ticket items and some bigger ticket items, anything from carabiners all the way to trucks and side by sides. So if I had to guesstimate, she’s probably put in for over $400,000 worth of grants in the last eight months. So with that, if we can get a portion of that plus this defender and the $35,000, we’re going to be in great shape.”