K9 dogs are an essential component of any police department. They have extraordinary senses that humans lack, allowing them to perform critical duties such as tracking down missing persons.
Recently, a brilliant K9 was tasked with finding a missing senior woman – and he saved the day in just 10 minutes!
On May 2, the Greenwood Village Police Department in Colorado received a report that an 85-year-old woman had been missing for two hours.
To assist in bringing the woman home as soon as possible, the agency deployed a K9 named Mercury, who has been with the department since July 2022 and is highly trained in finding down missing people.
Mercury and her handler Officer Speer arrived on the scene and got to work. The dog quickly found a trail and led the officers to a steep ravine — where the senior woman was found, clinging to a tree.
Bodycam footage shows the moment Speer and Mercury found the woman. “This is a friendly dog; he found you,” Speer tells the woman. “We’re going to get you home, okay?”
According to a Facebook post from the City of Greenwood Village Government, the deep ravine couldn’t be seen from the roadway or canal, so it’s unlikely the woman would’ve been found soon if it wasn’t for Mercury — whose search took no time at all.
“I had been searching for her for two hours and Mercury and officer Speer found her in 10 minutes: UNBELIEVABLE!” Pete Holman, the missing woman’s son, wrote on Facebook. “It was like watching a Navy Seal extraction.”
He explained that his mother became “gassed out” after trying to climb the hill and was unable to move.