The Washoe County Sheriff's Air Squadron played a major role in the search and rescue effort that located 79 year old Joyce Patrick.

The Washoe County Sherif's Office Air Squadron celebrated their 85th anniversary last year in 2022.

The Air Squadron was established in 1937 with 11 members and is composed of all volunteers who donate their time, equipment and knowledge.

The squadron has since grown over the years, and they now have 26 members including observers and pilots.

 "Out of the 26 members there's 6 of us with no pilots license and we have somewhere around 250,000 pilot and command flying experience in the group," says Donn Daggett, an Observer for 15 years and Former Commander.

He says the goal of the Air Squadron is to stand by for a call for help, usually when there's a missing person, vehicle, or if an area needs to be searched.

They cover the entire county taking up 6,600 square miles. They say it all starts with a call from the Sheriff's Office, then teams are put together by the search coordinator to design the grids for the search area. Then everyone launches into to action to cover their designated area.

This strategy is how they found 79-year-old Joyce Patrick on a lonely dirt road outside her car.

"They figured her automobile, if she had a full tank of gas, she could've gotten all the way to the Oregon border so that's why that search grid was set up the way it was," Daggett says.

Greta Mestre, another Observer with the Air Squadron explains "It's a team effort it's a lot of pieces of the puzzle that comes together to go out on a search especially when it's a real search."

Mestre says they train twice a month, one ground training and one in flight training. She says when they find peple on mission, it makes all the hours of volunteering worth it.

"So when this woman was found there were cheers in every airplane because it was truly a team effort," says Mestre. "It feels so great to find someone especially when they're waving their arms and they're ok."

Mastre also tells us the Observers' job is to track the GPS to spot something of interest while the pilot focuses on flying the plane.

"People get excited and they start looking around. Well, my job is not to get excited, my job is to fly the airplane, make sure we fly the airplane safely and don't put the airplane in a situation that's uncomfortable and the observer is supposed to guide me to where we go," says Rick McBurnett, the Chief Pilot of the Air Squadron, who's been flying for 50 years.

McBurnett says they use a software called ForeFlight to navigate their grid areas when they're on a mission.

"They're telling us go over there, go to the left, go to the right. I think that might be something, can we take another turn around it? But our job is to do that safely," McBurnett says.

Not to mention this unit is also very close, McBurnett says "And we have fun we have a bunch of good airline guys and military guys, and we like each other which is fun."

The program is also very expensive, the squadron has put in for funding from a few grants, but you can also donate to them through the link on this website.