BURLINGTON, Ky. — Somewhere across hundreds of acres of rural Boone County, an 18-month-old boy was missing.
Search crews looked from nearly every angle.
Drones flew overhead. A Kentucky State Police helicopter expanded the view from above. Water-rescue teams checked ponds and waterways. On the ground, law enforcement personnel and volunteers moved through woods, creeks and steep hills.
As many as 150 people joined the search earlier this month. But after roughly four hours, one of the most consequential resources was a bloodhound named Maverick.
“The terrain was rough. The terrain was hilly, and it took a while to find,” Boone County Emergency Management Director Kevin Voegelpohl said. “But at the end of the day, that dog tracked right to where we needed to be.”
Maverick led crews along a route authorities estimate stretched a mile to a mile and a half uphill. At the end of that trail, they found the boy alive.
The rescue demonstrated how Boone County responds when a person disappears: technology above, trained teams below and a network of agencies coordinating the space between them.
It also showed why, even with increasingly sophisticated technology, search and rescue still comes down to people — and sometimes paws — on the ground.
Eyes in the sky
The Boone County Sheriff’s Office recently replaced drones that had been in service for about a decade.
The new drones can scan large areas, detect heat signatures and send live video to more members of the command team. Under the previous system, the pilot and a visual observer watched the flight on a much smaller screen and relayed what they saw.
Now, more people can see the same images and help direct crews below.
“In a search and rescue, especially as vast as the one that we just went through, with hundreds of acres of land that we have to cover, the more eyes visually on what we’re looking at is for the betterment of everybody,” Boone County Sheriff’s Office Maj. Philip Ridgell said.
But a drone’s view has limits. Tree cover, weather and difficult terrain can hide a missing person from even a sophisticated camera.
“There always has to be boots on the ground,” Ridgell said. “The drones have a lot of capabilities, but there are just certain environmental factors that will never supersede boots on the ground.”
During the search for the toddler, those environmental factors were significant. Ridgell described a route that cut through woods, ran near a creek and climbed almost continuously uphill.
That was terrain Maverick was trained to handle.
One dog, one specific scent
K-9 Maverick is scent-specific. He is also the sheriff's office's first bloodhound.
Crews can present him with an item carrying one person’s odor. He is then trained to follow that individual’s trail without being diverted by the scents of officers, firefighters, volunteers or others in the area.
That precision matters because searches can create their own complications. Every additional person leaves behind another scent. People moving into an area without direction can disturb clues, interfere with a K-9’s track or appear as an unexpected heat signature on a drone camera.
Maverick’s training allows him to focus on the missing person.
Maverick’s current handler happened to be out of town when the child disappeared, so his former handler left home, picked up the dog and brought him to the scene, Ridgell said.
The sheriff’s office deployed multiple K-9s and requested additional dogs from other organizations. Tracking through rough terrain is physically demanding, and teams must be prepared to rotate dogs so a search can continue without significant downtime.
In this case, Maverick kept moving.
"At the end of the day, that dog tracked right to where we needed to be,” Voegelpohl said.
Coordinating an ‘organized chaos’
Finding the toddler required far more than a single agency.
Emergency management coordinated with law enforcement, firefighters, state troopers, Fish and Wildlife personnel, water-rescue teams and volunteers. Agencies from elsewhere in Greater Cincinnati, including Hamilton County, also responded.
“It at times seems like organized chaos, and it is at times,” Voegelpohl said. “But we have to maintain accountability. We have to maintain a plan so that these can be conducted in an efficient and a productive manner.”
Searches involving children often draw large numbers of community volunteers.
Ridgell, who grew up in Boone County, said that willingness to help is one of the community’s strengths.
“The community rallies, and they rally for all of the right reasons,” Ridgell said. “They want to be involved, and they want to help, and they want to be engaged.”
But volunteers entering a search area without checking in can unintentionally complicate the operation.
Their movement may contaminate scent trails, disturb potential clues or produce heat signatures that drone operators could mistake for the missing person. Someone unprepared for steep or unfamiliar terrain could also become injured or lost, forcing crews to divide their attention between two emergencies.
“That is why we simply ask for, when the community wants to help, that they start with us or they start with EMA and they’re given rules,” Ridgell said. “We make sure that it’s safe for them, and then we can deploy them with one of our deputies into an area.”
Officials also ask residents not to fly personal drones near a search. Unauthorized aircraft can interfere with official drones and helicopters. Boone County’s proximity to Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport also means public safety operators may need clearance before launching in some areas.
The request is not for the public to stay away. It is for volunteers to respond through official channels so their help becomes part of the plan.
The search starts — and ends — with a 911 call
Before drones launch or K-9s begin tracking, authorities said one action matters most: calling 911 immediately.
Families sometimes search on their own first, believing they know where their loved one may have gone. During that delay, a missing person can travel farther and a scent trail can become more difficult to follow.
Ridgell said families should not worry that they are wasting deputies’ time if the missing person is located before officers arrive.
“There is nothing better than when we are dispatched to one of those and it sounds awful, and then while we’re on the way, ‘We found them,’” Ridgell said. “That’s no skin off our back. We’ll go about our day. We’re just thankful that that was the outcome.”
If the person is found, families should call 911 again so dispatchers can notify the teams responding or already searching.
The recent search illustrated why speed and coordination matter. Authorities were notified quickly, and emergency management began assembling the resources needed for a large response.
Within about four hours, the boy was found alive.
The drones helped crews see more. Emergency managers kept the operation moving. Search teams pushed through difficult terrain.
And when technology could take them no farther, Maverick followed the scent the rest of the way.
