Gene Ralston and his wife left their home in southwestern Idaho less than a week after he had a coronary angioplasty, putting another 2,400 miles on their motorhome while traveling to and from Canada with their aluminum boat.
Ralston's doctor told him to take it easy, but the trip was just too important.
"We left to go find Ralph," Ralston said.
Ralph Der, 59, drowned in early August while fishing at a lake in British Columbia. Although he had never met the Ralstons, they would become intimately involved with the man's family while working to recover his body from the lake floor.
"We know practically everything about him, his favorite fish, and all kinds of things," said Ralston, who has volunteered with his wife in body searches since the early 1980s.
They've recovered the remains of 80 people and participated in the high-profile searches for Laci Peterson and Natalee Holloway. Ralston acknowledges not everyone may understand their life's work — he chuckled at a recent headline in the Canadian newspaper that read: "Idaho couple with odd hobby bring drowning victim home."
"We don't think it's odd," said his wife, Sandy.
The Ralstons initially worked with watercrafts, dogs and GPS coordinate systems, but their searches for drowning victims became more exact 12 years ago after they started using side-scanning sonar developed with technology similar to that used in medical ultrasounds.
AP
Ralston first learned about the technology in 1999 when he was assisting with a body search in Oregon. He was horrified when the company leading the effort charged the grieving family around $30,000 for their time and use of the equipment, he said.
Ralston and his wife purchased their own scanning sonar in 2000 and traveled later that year to Utah's Bear Lake, where authorities sought help in recovering a young man who drowned six week earlier. The Ralstons found the body within a few hours, under more than 100 feet of water.
"It was just such an awesome experience," Sandy Ralston said, her voice choking up at the memory. "To actually find somebody when everybody else had just totally given up."
The torpedo-shaped sonar device is 6 feet long and drags behind the boat, mapping the area and recording images in real time for the Ralstons to read on a computer screen. The Ralstons later acquired a remote-operated vehicle, called an ROV, which has a grabbing device that allows them to retrieve bodies.
Ralston estimates they've spent $100,000 on their equipment, though they don't charge families for their time or for the use of their technology, asking only for travel expenses. There are other companies that offer similar services, but they typically seek payment, sometimes thousands of dollars for a day's work, Ralston said.
Some law enforcement agencies also have the technology but most don't take it outside their jurisdictions nor use it as frequently, Ralston said. He and his wife, who are in their 60s and mostly retired from their business as environmental consultants specializing in water issues, don't have children and are mostly unencumbered when it comes to travel.
"Typically law enforcement agencies will spend a few days on a search," Ralston said. "They don't have the resources that we do, they don't have the luxury of having two or three weeks or more to search for someone."
17 Sep, 2012
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Source: http://feeds.abcnews.com/click.phdo?i=9857299c6a96cc56cb9e037c8f6f6d05
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