Kaua’i County discusses how to improve search and rescue operations after failed effort

Two months after a failed official effort to find a missing man from Kapa’a led to public criticism of Kauaʻi County’s search and rescue procedures, police and other emergency agencies outlined their handling of missing person cases last week during a tense County Council meeting in which improvements also were discussed.

On Aug. 11, after the official search was called off after two days with no leads, the body of 25-year-old Dylan Wagner was quickly found by a group of volunteers about 320 feet from the parking lot where Wagner’s car had been located in Wailua.

“I hope this case changes things,” County Council Chair Mel Rapozo said. “I think we can all acknowledge that we could have done better.”

Kaua’i Police Assistant Chief Kalani Ke, Fire Chief Michael Gibson and Kauaʻi Search and Rescue Vice President Bret Edgerton presented a slideshow outlining their practices and procedures for missing people. 

Kaua’i Police Department is the lead agency for missing person searches, with resources that include aircraft, helicopters, a communications support team and a drone team. The police often request assistance from the Kaua’i Fire Department and Kauaʻi Search and Rescue, a volunteer organization that operates under the command of the police. The police also can request aid from the U.S. Coast Guard and the state Department of Land and Natural Resources.

Public testifiers at the meeting included the late Wagner’s partner Olivia Brownell, who said she was “very impressed by the slideshow and all the resources that Kauaʻi has.” 

“All that being said, I find it ironic that it was the community less than an hour after we started our search that found him, 300 feet from his vehicle,” she said.

Before the Oct. 2 meeting, Council member Felicia Cowden, chair of Public Safety Committee, held an invite-only meeting with Rapozo, the police and fire departments, Kauaʻi Search and Rescue, and a few others involved in the search for Wagner in an effort to “strengthen effectiveness and inclusion,” she said previously.

At the council meeting, Cowden said she expected Ke to share some of the ideas discussed in the private meeting, but the assistant police chief said: “We haven’t established them yet. We’re still gonna pick those up.”

One proposal discussed by officials and council members was an amendment to the memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the police and Kauaʻi Search and Rescue, which would allow the volunteer organization to continue its efforts once the police call off its search. The suggestion was proposed by current Kauaʻi County Council candidate and retired fire captain Butch Keahiolalo, who provided testimony at the meeting.

“All these resources. They’ve got 3,000, 4000 hours of training, but they’re not able to do a lot of hours of actual response time. They could search for weeks, possibly with a large enough team,” he said.

Most searches for missing people last up to 72 hours, Gibson and Ke said. But it can end sooner if there is evidence the person no longer is living. Wagner died by suicide, but Brownell and others said searches shouldn’t be called off early for that reason. They said police should prioritize giving families closure, which Rapozo agreed with.

“We cannot ignore the fact that when somebody’s missing, people are hurting,
people are stressing, people don’t know what to think,” he said.

They also discussed possibly expanding police search options to include hunters with local knowledge, but they often don’t have certifications. That could be a challenge for liability reasons, Gibson said.  

Rapozo and other council members expressed that Kauaʻi Search and Rescue and the independent searchers could work together.

“Is there a way we can actually all coexist so we can get talented, trained personnel out there looking for missing people,” Rapozo said. “We all have to grow up and be part of the same community.”

Cowden also discussed a goal for an “all hands on deck” approach to searches. In an interview following the meeting, she said that she felt some progress had been made.

“I had hoped for stronger protocol to be determined before the meeting began to be presented today, but I believe that we have gotten some really good ideas and that we will move forward with perhaps an updated memorandum of understanding and maybe state legislative action,” she said.

In recent months, police search protocols, as well as Kauaʻi Search and Rescue’s abilities, have been criticized by community members, and particularly Timothy O’Rourke – one of three volunteers honored with certificates in August for locating Wagner. 

O’Rourke often independently searches for missing people after the police suspend its efforts and has labeled the organization as completely ineffective, unskilled and incompetent, among many other scathing remarks he made in several posts on his Facebook page.

“Search and rescue in the wilderness stinks, and it needs to get better,” O’Rourke said at the committee meeting.

Several members of Kauaʻi Search and Rescue, including Edgerton, dismissed the criticism, emphasizing their extensive training, certifications, preparations and time put into searches.

Edgerton played a video from Bill Weber, who said he had been working with the search and rescue team for the last few years.

“In my opinion, Kaua’i SAR is doing it right, and I’m optimistic about their future growth. I believe the county is lucky to have them,” Weber said in the video. 

Rapozo called the video “a commercial for KSAR,” which didn’t address the objective: finding and locating missing people.

Testifiers at the meeting continued to raise concerns about the ineffective search for Wagner.

The meeting did not address why the official search team was unable to come up with any leads in the two-day search, while the other team did in an hour.

“I’m not certified. But certifications donʻt find people,” said local hunter Eben Manini, who along with another hunter Klayton Kubo was credited with finding Wagner. “They just keep things more organized.”

In an interview after the meeting, Kauaʻi Search and Rescue President Noelle Cambeilh expressed a desire for the team to “get more boots on the ground,” and have more hunters and dedicated people join the team.

“I was a little sad that some people took away that there was this … hunter versus certified people kind of viewpoint, and that’s not us at all,” she said. “We want that knowledge on our team.”

During the meeting, Cambeilh’s partner Renae Hamilton continued to emphasize the training, discipline and high standards of the group, saying Cambeilh has spent thousands of hours training and her personal money to meet the standards of the rescue team. 

“To disrespect that and say that doesn’t mean anything, is not helpful,” she said. “Please understand how much value and how much they bring to our community …  And to not get veered off with misinformation because that doesn’t do anyone any good.”

Manini also questioned police protocol following Wagner being located. He said that shortly after Wagner’s body was removed from the area, it was not blocked off as a crime scene. 

It was one of many concerns that Sasha Kanei emotionally shared last month when she spoke out against the way police handled her mother Joddielynn Taylor’s disappearance and death in October 2021.

She said that the extensive efforts police described in their presentation were nothing like what police did for her mother, who was ultimately found by two teenagers.

“Half of the stuff that they stated never arose for my mother, which I want to know why? What is the difference between my mother and everybody else?” she said. “They need to step up their game, and they need to take it into consideration and think about our families and what we all are going through.”

Rapozo, who said Kanei’s story made him “want to cry,” said that the council would try to take action to make changes to current procedures. But so far nothing concrete has been proposed.