Texas EquuSearch

Tim Miller never wanted to start EquuSearch.

“I was fairly successful in the construction business,” he says. Starting a nonprofit was the farthest thing from this Santa Fe, Texas, builder’s mind. “Then my daughter disappeared.”

It was 1984, and his 16-year-old daughter Laura had walked down the street to use a payphone to call her boyfriend; he was coming over to have dinner with her family. She never returned. “The police said she was a runaway, but I knew in my heart she wasn’t. I’ll never forget the last time I saw her.”

In the ensuing months, Tim continued to search for answers; the police continued to be convinced Laura had run away from home. One morning, 17 months later, Tim was reading the newspaper and saw that the remains of two females had been found in a field about two miles from his house. “I took it to the police station. There wasn’t even a file on Laura because she was a ‘runaway.’” But Tim persisted, and eventually he received a call: One of the bodies was his daughter’s.

“I remember every second of that 17 months Laura was missing,” Tim says. “Every time my phone rang, every time someone drove by my house slow, I’d literally get heart palpitations thinking they’d found Laura. Once they did find her, I became obsessed with that field. Every day I’d go looking for the little cross she wore around her neck.

“Then Laura Smither disappeared. Then Shelley Sikes. Then a family called and said, ‘Our 13-year-old son is missing. How did you get through it?’ I went over to their house, and I saw the look of helplessness and fear in their eyes. I knew that’s what I’d looked like for 17 months. So I made a promise to God and Laura that I would never leave a family in that situation alone.”

Tim kept his promise. In 2000, he founded Texas EquuSearch Mounted Search and Recovery Team (now Texas EquuSearch), dedicating the nonprofit to the memory of his daughter Laura. EquuSearch’s motto is “Lost Is Not Alone.”

Today, EquuSearch has evolved from an equestrian-fueled search organization into one with more than 1,000 “members,” who volunteer to search for missing people all over the country, at no charge to the families. “We’ve never charged a family a penny,” Tim says. “We won’t allow them to pay even when they ask to, because they’ve already paid the biggest price.”

EquuSearch volunteers work in teams on horseback, foot, ATVs, boats, planes and helicopters. They use drones, sonar equipment, divers and infrared and night vision cameras to find missing people. Everything – flights across the country to search sites, equipment transfer, search coordination – is paid for by EquuSearch. “The first month, we found a little boy,” Tim says. “We did maybe two or three searches a year at the beginning, but then people started showing up, saying, ‘I’ve got an ATV,’ or, ‘If you ever need a diver, I’m certified and I’ve got a boat.’ Now we’ve got more resources than most law-enforcement agencies in the country.”

When Buzz resident Tracy Gaedcke Smith’s brother went missing while vacationing in Hawaii, she found out first-hand how invaluable those resources are. “My brother [Dewey Gaedcke] went to see where the lava flows into the ocean at night, because he had been told that it was really beautiful,” Tracy says. “Being my brother, he hiked in himself through a shortcut and got lost coming back. I immediately flew from Colorado to Hawaii. The police there told me I needed to go home and plan his funeral. I don’t even know how I knew to do it, but I called Tim. He coached me from Houston on how to get the media involved – we were on the Today show, all over – in order to keep the investigation going. The police had given up, so we needed pressure from the media asking questions.

“Tim instructed me over the phone what to do, while he was getting resources and people ready to fly over to Hawaii and search. He told me in the meantime to keep talking to people, and to target tourists on helicopter tours of the volcanoes. A 12-year-old boy on a tour told his dad he saw someone down there. God bless the parents for believing him. They turned around and found Dewey. He had been living off the morning dew for six days and had just finished recording a goodbye video for his daughters.

“My mom and EquuSearch were due to get on the plane the day he was found. We wouldn’t have found him without EquuSearch.”

LOST EquuSearch volunteers scour communities for missing people, often on foot through off-road areas. (Photo: Margi Levin)

Fueled by donors and volunteers, EquuSearch is a true grass-roots organization. Buzz residents Margi Levin and Kevin Cotter have volunteered as searchers for five years. “We moved to Houston from Petaluma, Calif., down the street from where Polly Klaas was ripped out of her home and murdered,” Margi says. “Also, Kevin’s stepfather had a traumatic brain injury and would wander, so we would conduct searches, which were fortunately all successful. Both experiences gave Kevin the passion to do this. He knows what it’s like to search for a missing loved one and feel that agony. We heard about Tim, and we knew we needed to be involved.

“All EquuSearch members are trained on how to search, although not everyone who volunteers searches, and that’s okay. We need all kinds of things – office work, fundraising, manning the command center, water runs during a search. There’s a call system that pages the members, giving details of every search and what equipment is needed. Everything is done hand in-hand with law enforcement. We can get a call at midnight or 3 a.m. Sometimes the search starts immediately, sometimes it starts the next morning.”

When asked how she feels about searching for missing people, Margi says, “It’s hard knowing you are looking for a body, especially on the first search. But you see the anguish in people’s eyes, and you know you need to help them. Or when there’s an elderly person, and you know you can find them. With our training, we know where to go and what to look for.

“Finding someone safe is amazing,” Margi says. “When a little boy camping with his family wandered off and he was found, there was such joy – tears, elation, hugging. It’s beyond winning the lottery to bring someone home safe. Even the families who know their loved one isn’t coming back alive – to be able to help them have that closure is a heck of a lot better than never knowing. That’s comforting.”

Margi is often asked, “What can I do [to keep my family safe]?” Most important, she advises, is making sure to have a recent, clear photo of all loved ones. “If we’re looking for a person who had a beard in a photo, and he’s shaved the beard off since, we have no idea how to find them without the beard.

“Also, rapid calls are so important. Time is not on our side, and we need to get out there and hopefully have a positive outcome for these families.”

To date, EquuSearch has assisted with cases in 38 states and eight countries. Tim and his crew have brought some 400 people home safe to their families, and they have recovered about 250 deceased victims. “At least 70 of those [victims] would never have been found without EquuSearch, I guarantee it,” Tim says. “We have also found many, many alive who would have otherwise been dead.”

EquuSearch is regularly called by the FBI, Texas Rangers and law enforcement across the country. Tim and his volunteers have trained people in other states and communities so that they no longer lose two days while Texas EquuSearch volunteers travel to the search sites. “But we’re not experts,” Tim is quick to say. “We’ve had a lot of success, but way too many are still missing. We just do the best that we can.

“My goal is to one day not be needed. But every day, there’s something going on here. Every day.

“It’s taken everything out of my personal life and changed everything about me,” he says. “But at times when I just feel like throwing in the towel, and a mother calls crying on the other end of the phone, I remind myself of that promise to Laura and God. I don’t care where in America we have a missing person case, we’re going to have trained people there so that no family has to be alone. We’re changing one little community at a time.

“I think we all want a purpose in life,” Tim says. “When I was working, I think my goal was to be a big, successful building contractor. But [losing Laura] crushed my ego. It gave me a purpose in life that I didn’t have before. Before it was, ‘How good am I doing, how good do I look?’ You know what, I don’t have to look that good, and I don’t have to have that much.”

Looking back 14 years to her time in Hawaii searching for her brother, Tracy says, “I was so alone over there. The way Tim supported me – I could never do enough or thank him enough.”

Tim’s response? “Don’t thank me. Thank Laura.”

Editor’s note: To volunteer or donate, go to texasequusearch.org.