SRU alums connect and give back with K9 search and rescue unit
Denise Ross and Marie Johnson have continued the proud history of Slippery Rock University alumni collaborating to make a difference in their own communities, but this tandem is making an impact with the help of their canine companions. Ross, ’13M, and Johnson, ’19, ’22M, are volunteers with Venango County’s Rocky Grove K9 Unit.
This small but mighty team helps track down missing people with the help of their dogs, Willow and Echo.
The team is part of the Rocky Grove Volunteer Fire Department’s new canine search and rescue unit, a group of volunteers, certified professionals, and dogs put together to fill the gap in the department and greater community’s operations for locating missing persons. The dogs are trained in such things as trailing, air scent and human remains detection for anywhere from a year to two years and often serve from six to eight years. The group also meets regularly to keep everyone’s skills sharp to ensure that they’re ready to help whenever they are called upon.
By day, Ross, who received a master’s in special education at SRU, is a reading specialist in a public cyber school. Johnson attained a degree in psychology from SRU before going on to graduate from SRU’s physician assistant program and is now working as a physician assistant through Meadville Medical Center. Both Ross and Johnson feel that the careers that SRU prepared them for have helped them in their work with the K9 unit.
“The reason I got involved with the K9 unit relates to my special education degree as well as my personal life,” Ross said. “I have an education background, but we also have a foster child on the autism spectrum who is also blind and has a seizure disorder, and my husband and I always worried — if he wandered off — how we could find him quickly. With that concern, we were led to the K9 unit.”