Idaho Army National Guard conducts 8th search and rescue mission of 2025
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An Idaho Army National Guard helicopter crew from Detachment 1, Golf Company, 1st Battalion, 168th Aviation Regiment executed the IDARNG Aviation Group’s eighth successful search and rescue mission of 2025 on Wednesday. The unit responded with an HH-60M Black Hawk and crew to a request from Air St. Luke’s for a helicopter with hoist capability. The Air St. Luke’s aircrew had located the patient, a 55-year-old male with a broken leg on a ridgeline near Fiddle Lake on Trinity Mountain east of Boise.
An initial assessment indicated that no suitable landing zone was available near the patient. However, by the time the HH-60 crew arrived on scene, the Air St. Luke’s team had located a suitable LZ, landed and hiked to the patient to assess him and provide first aid.
Sgt. First Class Jade Parsons, the crew’s senior flight medic, was hoisted down and made contact with the Air St. Luke’s team at the patient’s location. After conferring, the joint team determined that with the landing zone and additional manpower, the patient could now be carried by litter from the point of injury to the Air St. Luke’s helicopter. Working together, the Air St. Luke’s and Army National Guard crew members carried the patient by litter to the landing zone and loaded him into the Air St. Luke’s helicopter. However, due to power limitations of their helicopter, the Air St. Luke’s crew was unable to safely evacuate the patient’s dog and gear along with him.
Parsons and Staff Sgt. Jake Brown – the second Army medic on the mission – improvised a muzzle and makeshift hearing protection for the dog before loading him and the patient’s gear into the Black Hawk. The Soldiers then safely delivered the dog and gear to a Fairfield ambulance that was on standby about a mile away.
“In the National Guard, we’re also trained in canine medicine, so we know how to sedate, protect and transport them,” said Parsons.
In this case, the dog was friendly and did not require sedation to board the Black Hawk and fly to safety.
“He was really good,” said Parsons. “When we got him to the ambulance and he got the muzzle off, he turned around and smiled at us.”
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