Embedded Files
April 24, 2025
We had another successful meeting tonight! Thank you Conrad and Joshua for teaching us ropes training! I appreciate the time and effort you put into helping us learn how to properly tie knots for the safety of our volunteers and the potential victims we will have.
We talked about the upcoming fundraisers- the Hot Chocolate and Coffee Bar and the Seafood Boil.
We handed out our T-Shirts for some of the volunteers.
I let them know that we did get the $10000 match grant from the Harry Morrison Foundation.
On June 28, there is going to be a SAR meeting in Grangeville. Brandy will get us more information.
We learned how to make anchor knots tonight.
Next meeting we are going to see if a Grangeville police officer will come and teach us navigation.
We talked about Two Bear Rescue being a useful rescue unit for helicopter rescue.
Our next meeting will be on May 15 at 6 pm. It will be at the lodge again unless I contact you prior to the meeting.
Let me know if you are interested in taking the Wilderness First Aid class in Grangeville on May 24-25. They are trying to get funding for this class, but if you want to take it be prepared to pay $255.
I found a volunteer who is willing to be trained for Sonar.
Thank you Conrad, Brandy, Garry, Chad, Adriana and Rich for coming tonight! Thank you Joshua for helping your dad with the training and being our victim!
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March 20, 2025
We appreciate the participation in the meeting tonight! Thank you Conrad and Brandy for putting together the training for CalTopo! You guys are greatly appreciated!
We had a great training on CalTopo. The team went out and did a search utilizing the CalTopo App. There is a lot of information on this program, so ask bring your questions to the next meeting on April 15, 2025.
We accomplished getting $10000 in donations! I will be sending in the proof to the Harry Morrison Foundation on 3/21/25 and they will write a $10000 check for the match grant!
Yesterday, I heard from AG West Farm Credit. They are issuing a check for $2500 to our organization.
We have another new volunteer. Welcome Taylor Graham to our team!
You received some supplies tonight, but if there is anything else you need, please let me know.
We talked about downloading the SIGNAL app on your phone. This will be where you receive reminders for the upcoming meetings.
Garry Elder will be going through the Joel Hardin Professional Tracking class at the end of May, 2025. We may have one other volunteer taking the class as well. Thank you for being willing to go through this class!
SAR will be purchasing T-Shirts for the group. We decided on blue with block white lettering. If you want a baseball cap, sweatshirt, etc., we can order them for you, but it will be at your expense.
Our next meeting is on April 15, 2025 at 6 pm at the lodge.
Thank you for coming to the meeting! You are truly appreciated!
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February 20, 2025
Thank you for coming to the meeting! For those that were not able to attend, there was a lot of information.
We had some changes to the board. Cody Killmar is going to be our Director. Brian Jones is the President. Tiffany Thomeczek is the Vice President. These changes occurred for a couple reasons. As we discussed in the January meeting, Jessica Jones stepped down. While Jessica was a good help, life took her in a different direction. So, Tiffany volunteered for the VP position. As you all know, Cody is a busy man. He took some extra responsibility on as the President of the Chamber of Commerce and a different position with teaching. This is why Brian stepped in as President. While we don't want Cody going anywhere because he is an asset to RCRC, we had him step into the roll as the Director. This will allow him to know what is going on with the SAR, but he won't have to be involved everyday like he has been.
Rich Hieter, Head of Security, told us what he will be doing when we get called out. I have handouts he went over for those of you who did not make the meeting.
Brandy Hensen, K9 Unit, gave us information on how she and the dogs work. We also were able to watch them in action. I have a handout on this as well.
Donations are coming in! In total, we have received $3540. We have a check from CCFCU for $1000 and about $500 from the Agape Feast. Also, Rogers Toyota called and said that Ryan Rogers is going to donate, we just don't know how much yet. The check should be here anytime now. We have put a pretty big dent in the $10000 we need to get in donations to get the match grant!
We talked a little about the CalTopo app. We will reach out to CalTopo to see if they can do a presentatio with us during the next meeting. If they can't, we do have a couple of the volunteers who have used it before and will show us some tricks to using the system. We need to resend the code to those of you who have not downloaded it, so please reach out to Andrea at andrea@rigginsambulance.org to let her know.
For the volunteers who did not make it to this meeting, we have a backpack for you. We ordered some supplies for you as well and it looks like they will be coming within the next couple weeks. We are still ordering other supplies, but we are trying to get you all set to go out on a call.
We will be voting in the ByLaws during our next meeting, so please be sure to go to the Info button of the website and read through them. If you have any questions about them, please contact us.
We had 3 new people sign up at this meeting! We have our first volunteer who is under 18! He is interested in the K9 team and may be interested in other teams, but we need to talk to him about what he'd like to do. The other 2 volunteers are new to the area, so we are excited to have them!
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January 30, 2025
Thank you to those volunteers who could make it to the meeting tonight! For those of you who could not attend, here’s what we talked about:
We have sent in 5 rather large grants. We have been approved for a $10000 match grant with the Harry Morrison Foundation. If we earn $10000 by December, they will match it!
We have sent 40 donation letters to businesses in Riggins, Grangeville, Cottonwood, Lewiston and Boise. Along with those letters, we have applied to businesses online for donations.
Another avenue we took to see if we could get donations was to talk to Doug Bishop with United Search Corp. If you are not aware, he was the one who came to Riggins to find Marsha Hayes. He has “people” who have money and help him when he needs to buy something he may not be able to get on his own. So, we called and asked if he would help us approach those people to see if they would be willing to donate to RCRC. He is going to contact them and ask. Marsha’s son, Brian, also knows people that would like to donate.
And we also talked to Jeannie Fitch who, for the past several weeks, has been putting this in her article. She suggested that we talk with Dana Greig at the Idaho County Free Press. She has a much bigger column and spoke with Andrea today about putting it in her column.
We spoke about the supplies that are going to be put into the backpacks. He is a list of what we put together. A suggestion tonight was a emergency blanket which is something we should have. If you have any other suggestions, please email Andrea.
Knife/Carabiners Flagger Tape
Rain Jackets Stake Flags
Flashlights Water Pills
Compasses Sunscreen
Whistles Insect Repellent
Notebooks/Pens Hard Hats
First Aid Kits Tarps
Lighters Electrical Tape
Webbing Prusik Loops
When applying for the grants, some of them have to be specific to what we want, ie., if we apply for a grant and ask for $27000 for a UTV, that is what the money has to be spent on. We have applied for grants specifically for backpacks and supplies so when we worked on this, we researched the best backpacks for SAR units and found that we need 45 to 60 liter packs. The cost on those are anywhere from $80-140 or more, but we figure about $3500 for 25 volunteers. That money has to be used for the backpacks. We figured $375 for knives and so on. So, in the event that you come up with something else that should go in the pack, we may have to have a fundraiser or apply for another grant.
We decided that we are going to have a volunteer meeting every 3rd Thursday of the month. It will be at 6 pm. Location may vary. We will let you know the first week of the month where it will be held. The next meeting will be on February 20.
February 20 meeting will be about getting familiar with UTV’s and what the Security Team will be doing if we get called out.
CalTopo is another item we discussed. This app is a tracking system for when you are called out to help locate a missing person. We are trying to get a group rate because we need all of you to have this app. (The cost of this is part of a grant we applied for as well.)
Doug Bishop will be coming over at some point to train some volunteers with the Sonar Equipment. Not sure when this will happen, but he is prepared when the Payette Lake thaws. (This is where the training will be.)
Jessica Jones has stepped down as VP. We have that position open. All of the admin staff is volunteer at this point as well. (One thing we didn’t mention about this position is that we need you to be responsible for keeping up with Facebook, Instagram and the website. Andrea is writing the grants and will keep putting together the classes. You also must be able to attend the meetings. There are a couple of people that may be interested in the position, but if any of you other volunteers are interested or know who would be, please let Cody or I know.
We have our own domain now. Our emails are changing. Feel free to cc our rigginsambulance.org emails, but please send all future emails to the following:
andrea@rigginscanyonrescuecorp.org
cody@rigginscanyonrescuecorp.org
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