Doing SAR in a mountainous region, we responded to a broad spectrum of incidents which were non back country related - a young girl snatched off the street by a deviant, a young baby wandering away from home, drivers breaching flooding roadways or missing mountain curves, air crash victims, and two gentlemen who drove their station wagon into a vertical, 100 foot deep mine shaft. Why? They were driving down a road with their lights off. Why were their lights off? They were driving away from the scene of a burglary they had perpetrated. We pulled them out, at significant risk, after they had been at the bottom of the shaft for about three days. The county jail probably never had more grateful inmates. I suppose it might have made sense to charge them for their rescue, although the cost wasn't really that great.

Local law enforcement agencies usually have a mandate to maintain the public peace, and the availability of a trained, usually volunteer, outfit able to operate in nonurban situations is a valuable resource for accomplishing this.

As a volunteer organization, we were willing to accept donations from victims and their families. For many years, the largest donation we had received came from the owners of a dog we had rescued......

I think donations are a better way to approach the problem.