Mysteries keep Tom on the trail

KENT BLECHYNDEN/ The Dominion Post

PROBLEM-SOLVERS: Search and rescue volunteer Tom Clarkson is one of 3000 volunteers nationally and 100 in Wellington.

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Tom Clarkson says an inquiring mind has kept him searching for missing people for more than 40 years.

A retired Niwa scientist with a love of problem solving, Dr Clarkson, 63, is a volunteer for Land Search and Rescue.

At times the task was grim but there were happy endings, he said. Back in 1987, a seven-year-old girl and an adult family friend and a dog disappeared after playing hide and seek in the bush.

Everyone feared the worst. Police had two helicopters, officers and LandSAR volunteers searching for the pair.

After two nights in the bush the man, aged 50 but intellectually disabled, was found and told rescuers the girl was nearby.

"She was snuggled up with the dog and he was a huge dog, a labrador, and survived fine. It had a happy ending."

But there have been cases with sad outcomes such as the searches for liquor millionaire Michael Erceg, whose helicopter crashed, and murdered six-year-old Coral-Ellen Burrows, and the disappearance of Kaye Stewart.

The biggest search was the Erebus disaster but with his wife pregnant, his role was to communicate with rescuers and organise supplies rather than help recover the bodies in Antarctica.

In 1972 a search ended with the rescue of rescuers. A couple became stranded on the crater of Mt Ruapehu. Dr Clarkson was one of the rescuers but when the weather turned rough everyone the couple and eight searchers spent another night in an igloo.

Down the mountain another team were not so lucky. "When they woke up they couldn't get out of the snow cave, it was so deep, and they were running out of air. They were buried 20 foot under the snow," Dr Clarkson said.

"It became a desperate operation to find these people."

After being flown to safety and told of their trapped comrades, the original rescuers began the search to save them. Four hours later they were freed. "That was a lesson for everyone they were lucky to get out."

Dr Clarkson became a volunteer in 1968 and was a founding member of the Search and Rescue Institute, providing training to volunteers.

He said an "inquiring mind" and experience in the outdoors were integral to being a volunteer.

LandSAR volunteers receive a text when someone goes missing and drop everything to mount a search.

There are 3000 volunteers nationally and 100 in Wellington.

LandSAR chief executive Hadyn Smith said Dr Clarkson was "one of the enduring characters".

Volunteers were crucial in searches, Mr Smith said. "The police could not carry out most search and rescues without the support of volunteers."

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