Mike Sullivan had spent a year scouring dozens of Florida waterways when he finally saw it: the glint of a two-tone 1961 Chevrolet Impala.
Sullivan made the discovery while diving in a canal near Plantation, Florida, in August 2024, nearly 50 years after Doris Wurst and her 3-year-old daughter Caren went missing. He had finally found them.
"It was pretty emotional," he said.
Sullivan isn't a police officer or official of any sort. He's an auto parts salesman who volunteers his time to search for long-lost people.
Families frequently turn to such volunteers to find missing loved ones in unforgiving conditions, sometimes after years or decades of searching. These good samaritans often crack cold cases and use dogs, drones and helicopters to rescue everyone from natural disaster victims to missing children.
The demands on volunteer search-and-rescue groups are expected to increase as the federal agencies they work with face unprecedented cuts under President Donald Trump, putting pressure on a life-and-death safety net that's already stretched and often haphazard − unappreciated, underfunded and unregulated.
Advocates want more states to adopt basic guidelines with hopes more missing people will be found, volunteers will be better protected and bereft families won't fall victim to searchers-for-hire schemes.
"You've got teams with the latest technology, with standardized training, aggressive testing, continuing education, good, healthy budgets, and you've got people who just don't have the resources to really do much of anything, so just a wide range of capabilities," said Robert Koester, a search mission coordinator with the Virginia Department of Emergency Management. "There are places you want to get lost and places you don't want to get lost."
Christopher Boyer, the executive director of the National Association of Search and Rescue, warned the demands on volunteers will only increase as federal agencies that support their work, including the National Park Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, grapple with massive, unprecedented layoffs by the Trump administration.
"Those are our two biggest issues right now in the industry," Boyer said. "The disassembly of government and how that's going to impact unfairly the volunteers that are going to have to pull up the slack for people."
Search coordinators say they already need more funds and their ranks are dwindling. Some volunteer groups are able to get resources from the government, but Boyer said the vast majority of the work is funded through grants and donations.
The Skamania County Sheriff's Office search-and-rescue team turned to GoFundMe in 2024 after thieves stole thousands of dollars worth of equipment while they were on a grueling three-day search for two lost hikers that began on Christmas morning. The men, a 59-year-old and 37-year-old from Portland, Oregon, were found dead in a Washington state forest after they disappeared while searching for Sasquatch, authorities said.
The reliance on volunteer labor and fundraising saves law enforcement a lot of money and provides them a vital service they couldn't otherwise accomplish, Boyer said.