PLEASANT HILL LAKE — Ethan Rogers floated on his back in the 72-degree lake water on Wednesday.
He was clearly enjoying a refreshing break on a hot summer afternoon in the remarkably calm water.
“It feels great,” said the smiling 27-year-old member of the Richland County Sheriff’s Office dive team.
Rogers floated easily in a bulky dry dive suit, air tank, regulator, buoyancy regulator and other dive gear.
He had labored into the gear just a few minutes before, underneath blue skies and beating sun on a a searing 90-degree day.
The dichotomy of that moment compared to a frozen North Lake Park pond in December could not have been lost on Rogers, who dove down to help pluck a stolen truck from the bottom of the ice-covered pond 10 months ago.
Regardless of the weather — blazing heat, icy cold or somewhere in between — Rogers and other dive team members have to be ready to go at a moment’s notice.
The RCSO squad, which was training at the 850-acre lake last week, is the only dive team remaining in Richland County.
The team has existed for decades, starting long before Rogers was born.
“It was going before I started and I have been here for 31 years. The exact date I don’t know for sure,” said Lt. Steve Boyd, the team leader whose full-time job is leading the RCSO support bureau.
RCSO dive team trains monthly
More than a half dozen team members train monthly throughout the year at lakes like Pleasant Hill and Charles Mill.
“We take our boats out and run them. We take all of our equipment. We’ll get divers in the water, do some search patterns,” Boyd said early Wednesday morning as team members gathered in the RCSO parking lot before making the drive to Pleasant Hill with boats and equipment.
It was following one of those search patterns that Rogers later took his break. While submerged in the murky water, he had followed directional instructions issued via rope by a teammate serving as a tender on the surface.
Because visibility is often zero, firm and deliberate tugs on the tether line acted as the diver’s primary safety and navigation link. Different numbers of tugs mean different things, such as change direction or come to the surface.
Dive team members retreat to the confines of the Friendly House pool in the winter.
The pool training can also be invaluable to a dive team that often operates in waters that provide little to no visibility.
“We will blindfold our masks and guys will work assembling PVC pipes and also use nuts and bolts to put things together, working with our hands when we can’t see. A lot of the stuff we dive in, the visibility is about one foot on a good day,” Boyd said.
That was certainly the case in December, when divers sank into the bitter cold water at North Lake Park, descending about 12 feet to the bottom to help locate and retrieve a truck ice fishermen had earlier observed with sonar equipment.
The fishermen noticed the truck around noon. Ice had to be cut away. The sun had gone down long before the dive team went into the frigid water.
Rogers and Deputy Alec Mills, two of the team’s newest members, were among those who helped ensure the truck had no bodies in it before placing straps in and around the vehicle that allowed it to be lifted out of the pond.
It was the first such “call out” for Rogers — with outside air temperatures in the 20s.
“Getting in freezing cold water for the first time after cutting the ice, dealing with the large tow straps from the recovery truck — it was a lot, but we worked through it and we figured it out as a team,” he said.
“I don’t know exactly how cold the water was. But it was cold. I think the adrenaline kind of kept you warm a little.
“It was a crazy experience. That’s for sure.”
Two newest divers are also K-9 officers
Both Rogers and Mills have also been the sheriff’s office only K-9 officers since 2003, working hand-in-paw with their partners, Turbo and Jax.
Mills, a Columbus-area native who joined the RCSO nearly six years ago, said he got involved with the dive team a couple of years ago because he loved being in the water and enjoyed the team’s recovery efforts.
“If we can find stolen guns, or like the stolen vehicle in North Lake Park, those are good things,” he said.
“Unfortunately, if someone drowns … we can at least help give that family closure (by recovering the body),” he said. “It’s more about doing it for others, more than myself.”
But that doesn’t make sinking into darkness easy.
“It’s unsettling. It’s uncomfortable. It can be, for lack of a better term, scary. But you just have to get down their and find yourself at peace and get on with finding what you are looking for,” Mills said.
“It’s something you have to do.”
Rogers, who has been with the RCSO for just more than five years, quickly agreed.
“It’s a lot like the (law enforcement) career. You have got to try to be confident and kind of get comfortable being uncomfortable. Your body adapts to the best of its ability, but I think there are some nerves there for sure,” he said.
Rogers joined the dive team three years ago.
“I wanted to do more … do something extra,” he said. “I knew I liked swimming growing up in Ashland.”
Rogers and his K-9, Turbo, work third shift on patrol duties, from 10 p.m. to 6 p.m.
“We stay busy,” he said. “I train 16 hours a month with my canine partner and then we train once a month with the dive team. Working it all into a schedule, it can be a lot. But it’s definitely rewarding when you get to do stuff and be a part of the community.”
Joining Rogers, Mills and Boyd at Pleasant Hill last week were Capt. Brian Gunder, the RCSO operations bureau commander; Deputy Caleb Neer; and Jeff Winbigler, a transport officer with the jail corrections staff. RCSO Det. Burt Skeen, another member of the team, was unable to attend.
If you are going to fail, it’s better to fail in training
The training day had its challenges, including a boat motor with a fuel pump issue that went undetected until both boats had cleared the no-wake zone around the dock.
Like all good teams, the divers worked the problem in the water. The boat and its motor were recently donated to the RCSO dive team. Bugs are still being worked out.
The other boat, a small inflatable Zodiac, carried two team members to shore to retrieve tools and equipment. Ultimately, the engine failure required the boat to be retired for the day.
That engine will be taken to a marina for additional work by professional mechanics.
Later in the day, team members tested the Zodiac motor, successfully running it from the dock to the dam and then back again. Adjustments were made along the way.
“That’s why we call it training,” one member said.
The fact is that safe, high-stress and failure-prone training prevents more serious mistakes during actual diving recovery efforts. A military adage maintains, “We fall to the level of our training.”
The loss of one boat for the day also didn’t stop divers from entering the water and conducting multiple search patterns.
‘We are thankful we still have our team.’
Sheriff Steve Sheldon, in his sixth term and the longest-tenured sheriff in Richland County history, is undeniably proud of his dive team.
He and Maj. Jim Sweat, a dive team veteran, visited with the unit in the RCSO parking lot as members geared up for the trip to Pleasant Hill Lake.
“Shelby Fire Department used to have a dive team. Mifflin Township used to have a dive team. We’re kind of the only game in town now,” Sheldon said. “We are thankful we still have our team. We have been very lucky.”
He thanked the city of Shelby for donating a boat. A donated pontoon boat needs maintenance before it can be used. The trailer the team uses to haul its gear came “at a very, very reduced price” from Clinton County in southwest Ohio.
“They didn’t want it anymore. We have come a long way in the last year or so with our dive team. We have had a lot of drownings in Richland County. I don’t think people realize how many we have had,” the sheriff said.
The sheriff’s department has to fund jail and courtroom security operations, serve court papers and also maintain a county-wide road patrol. A dive team is not a legal requirement, but Sheldon said he thinks it’s worth having.
“I think there’s a necessity for our dive team. We wanted to step up to the plate. It’s not only rescue or recovery of bodies and vehicles. From an evidentiary standpoint, our team is finding guns and knives and other things,” Sheldon said.
Donations from the public help keep the team in the water, according to the sheriff.
“Most of the stuff our dive team guys get is either reduced rate or donated. We are still looking for some donations,” he said.
“We need about $60,000 more. The equipment is old and needs to be replaced. That money would get us everything we need,” the sheriff said.
Boyd said the dive team trailer arrived about a year ago and it was empty inside.
“We got with Apex, a company up in Shelby. We designed some lockers and shelving and storage to put all our dive equipment inside. They had it done in about two weeks and did an excellent job with it,” he said.
Before then, the team relied on an old ambulance for gear transport.
With the new trailer, the team required a better vehicle and purchased a Ford F-350 pickup truck. The need became absolute when the old vehicle towing the trailer blew an engine on its way back from North Lake Park.
“We needed something reliable that we could haul with and the F-350 was perfect,” Boyd said. “We can put a cap on it and store some of our equipment afterwards in the bed. We can take it to a local (fire) station and clean it off and hang it in the trailer to dry.”
‘The equipment is very, very old’
Like the sheriff, Boyd doesn’t mince words when it comes to the dive team’s equipment, including the 20-year-old dry suits.
“The equipment is very, very old,” he said. “We’re in the process of trying to get quotes for new dry suits.”
He said a single set of gear for a diver — including buoyancy compensators, regulators and masks — is not cheap.
“We’re looking at anywhere between $5,000 and $10,000 for one entire set. We have got six guys on the dive team now and we’re getting ready to add two to four more,” Boyd said.
“We’re not going to be able to get a new suit for every guy because it would just be so expensive. But we’re trying to hopefully get up to four sets of new gear because our dry suits … our newest one is probably close to 20 years old,” he said.
Dive team is a popular special duty for RCSO members. Boyd, who began diving in 2004, said about 10 members of the department had applied to join, hoping to land one of the new openings. Those selected will have to undergo training to become certified.
Recovering bodies is the worst part of the job
The team stays busy.
“We’ve had three callouts in the last three weeks looking for evidence in ponds,” Boyd said. “We do that a lot.
“We will look for guns, knives, stolen equipment. We do a mixture of recovery, rescue and then search for any type of evidence. It’s always nice to find the evidence you’re looking for and hopefully close out a case,” he said.
Recovering a body is the worst part of the job, Boyd said.
“One of my first calls involved finding a 5-year-old boy that had drowned in a pond. I actually found him. We had one about three years ago where a lady drove into a pond. It was like zero degrees outside. We had to dive in and hook up the car.
“She unfortunately had drowned inside the car,” he said. “It’s a lot to deal with. We debrief after calls like that. The sheriff offers to let us go and speak to somebody professionally after something like that through the Employee Assistance Program.
“It’s tough. But you kind of have to shake it off and go on and get ready for the next call.”
(Below are photos taken Wednesday during a Richland County Sheriff’s Office dive team training event at Pleasant Hill Lake.)
