Vernon resident Coralie Nairn received the 2024 Community Award with the BC Achievement Foundation for her service in the search and rescue field.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ BC Achievement Foundation

A Vernon resident has been acknowledged for her incredible 35 years of dedication in the field of search and rescue.

Coralie Nairn was one of 20 people in the province who received the prestigious 2024 Community Award with the BC Achievement Foundation this year that recognizes extraordinary people who build stronger and more resilient communities.

“I wasn’t expecting it, I feel very humbled,” she said.

Since entering the search and rescue field in 1989, Nairn has seen search technology evolve, made lifetime friendships with other volunteers and learned about compassion, respect and resiliency. 

“There are so many different ways search and rescue has brought out the best in me, it’s a huge part of my makeup.”

Nairn grew up moving around remote places in British Columbia, Alberta and the Northwest Territories.

“I grew up without a lot of television,” she said. “I grew up in rural places spending a lot of time outdoors, where survival was just something you learned,” she said.

When she was 16, Nairn was babysitting and saw a documentary on satellite television about a search and rescue group based out of Colorado. It planted a seed that stuck with her.

“I thought I can do that, I want to do that,” she said. 

When she was 18, she graduated high school, was working and got a post secondary education but she was still thinking about doing search and rescue. She joined what is now Central Okanagan Search and Rescue in 1989, later transferred to the Vernon branch.

As a Level II Search and Rescue Manager, part of Nairn’s job is to assess the scene upon arrival at emergencies. The first priority is to evaluate the safety of the rescuers and analyze the risks.

“Sometimes we have to wait for a situation to change, it might mean waiting for daylight or moving further downstream,” she said. “We might be looking for an individual known to police, known to carry weapons. We always have the ability to just not do the search.”

The job comes with physical and emotional challenges. Nairn has seen hugely successful rescue outcomes and some that are tragic.

“We have to respond to the critical brain, not the emotional brain and sometimes that’s hard especially when children or vulnerable people are involved. You see things, people can die in front of you. We talk about it, how to handle it and how to build resiliency.

"We have triggers and trauma in our bodies and there’s no shame if it affects us, we’re trying to have normal responses in abnormal situations.”

Dignity and respect for everyone involved in a rescue mission is at the heart of the operations.

“I know when I’m not saving a life, bringing someone home not in the state we all wish for, that at least there is closure for that family,” she said. “I always look at any person we’re looking for and treat them with respect and dignity.

“I don’t consider myself mentally more resilient than my teammates, I’m nothing without the rest of my team. We hold each other and build each other up.”

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Nairn said the good outcomes keep her going.

“The first big search I was on years ago was for a five-year-old girl that was missing, I was on the team that located her. We’d been told she’d be deceased, she was not. I remember the exhaustion and the jubilation when we found her, the memory has stayed with me for a lifetime.”

Camaraderie stays strong even after a search and rescue member moves on.

“There are times when you’re depending on your buddy to keep you safe,” she said. “Some amazing team members have become life long friends. They have to leave for a variety of reasons, but you stay in touch with them because you’ve built that close relationship.”

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Nairn has seen technology change over the past 35 years in the field.

“When I started, we didn’t have GPS or cell phones, everything was old fashioned topographic maps and hand written reports,” she said. “Now we have GPS, I have an iPhone with apps on it and a laptop computer with internet mapping capabilities."

Nairn has satellite communication devices where she can get a Wi-Fi call in a remote area.

“Technology has made our job easier, also search theory and strategy has changed. Now there is science behind searching for missing persons.”

Nairn spent 11 years with the Canadian Civil Air Search and Rescue Association where she became a Search and Rescue Master with the Canadian Army.

“I became a qualified spotter and was working on my navigation, but as a search manager on the ground I was calling airplanes into the search area while managing a team on the ground and wasn’t able to commit to doing both, so had to give one up.” 

In addition to doing search and rescue, Nairn is a program instructor for the Justice Institute of British Columbia where she teaches search management and leadership.

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She volunteers as an instructor for the Adventure Smart Program where she has trained over 1,000 children and 500 adults on the safety of outdoor exploration.

Nairn has given presentations to schools, youth clubs like scouts and guides, and to adult outdoor adventure clubs on outdoor safety.

For anyone interested in volunteering on a search and rescue team there a few things to consider.

“We want curiosity and someone who is all right to follow directions,” she said. “We scare people off when we’re recruiting, we’re really up front about the commitment aspect. I’m nothing without my family support, having other people taking things on when I go away on a search for hours, or sometimes days.

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“They have to have heart and desire, they don’t need a lifetime of adventure knowledge, but they do need to be active. There is a modicum of physical demands, we’re doing cliff rescues and swift water rescues.”

At a May 8 ceremony in Victoria, BC Achievement Award recipients read citations in the presence of the Honourable Janet Austin, Lieutenant Governor of BC.

“It was regal, we were in this beautiful historic building presenting citations, I’m in awe over the citations of my fellow awardees, they’re pretty amazing people. We were treated like royalty and made to feel valued and special.”

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