Morgantown/Honey Brook townlively.com
APRIL 17, 2024
SERVING THE LOCAL COMMUNITIES SINCE 1954
ChesCo Search Dogs seek to find the lost or the missing BY FRANCINE FULTON
Through getaways, PA Family Travel Fair brings people together BY JEFF FALK
Sometimes we tr y too hard. Sometimes we overthink things. Sometimes the answer is right in front of us. The PA Family Travel Fair has a unique way of simplifying things. The lively event focuses on recreation, on Pennsylvania, on family. “ R e c re a t i o n i s s o important to your well-being,” said Wendy Royal, organizer of the PA Family Travel Fair and editor of Where & W hen Pennsylvania. A little girl meets the Achenbach Pastries “It’s cr ucial to your mascot at last year’s PA Family Travel Fair. health to check out of your job. get away and make those memIt can just be a long weekend. ories. You only get 18 summers But it’s time with kids too. It’s with your kids.” important for families to spend The sixth edition of the annual time together. It’s important to PA Family Travel Fair, hosted by See Travel Fair pg 3
American Legion to host open house
Keith Studnick and his dog, Hunter
also involved with finding those who are deceased, including those people who have died by suicide. However, the team does not get involved in finding escaped criminals. For example, they were not part of the search for Danelo Cavalcante, who escaped from the Chester County Prison and was hiding for nearly two weeks in the Chester County terrain before being captured by law enforcement. “We do not (get involved with) criminal activity. We did not search for Cavalcante,” Studnick stated. “We are looking
for people who are not trying to run away. Police dogs are looking for people who may not want to be found.” Unlike Yoda, a police-trained Belgian Malinois that helped to take down Cavalcante, ChesCo Search Dogs are trained not to bite for their own safety. “We are looking for kids on the spectrum or elderly people with dementia or Alzheimer’s, and you don’t know how the person will react when the dog finds them,” Studnick pointed out. He explained that when a call
BY FRANCINE FULTON
Community members are invited to visit Col. Jacob Morgan American Legion Post 537 in Morgantown during an open house set for Saturday, April 20. The Legion will open at noon, and special events will take place from 1 to 6 p.m. The first-time event is designed to encourage new members to join and to acquaint the public with the Legion’s activities. “The goal is to get people familiar with the Legion,” said Linda Jacobs,
historian, noting that information will be available at the event for those who would be interested in membership. “We will have food, entertainment and music.” Live DJ entertainment will be provided by Sir Charles Distinctive Entertainment & DJ Services. Stand-up comedian Alan Massenburg will be featured from 1:45 to 2:30 p.m. Food will be offered for sale by Russo’s Gourmet Foods & Market, an Italian market in Wyomissing. Also featured will be a cornhole tournament as See American Legion pg 2 UP TO
See Search dogs pg 5
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embers of the ChesCo Search Dogs team never know when they will get the call. Whether it be to search for a lost hiker or a missing child, the dogs and their handlers are ready to be dispatched wherever they are needed. ChesCo Search Dogs is an all-volunteer nonprofit organization dedicated to training and providing trained K-9 teams to help find missing and lost persons and to detect human remains. ChesCo Search Dogs has more than 20 K-9s and their handlers in various stages of training who provide free ground search services to locate lost or missing persons in Chester County and throughout eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey and northern Delaware. “A lot of times the person is missing but not lost, and there is no contact. We go out regardless,” said team president Keith Studnick, who is the owner of a trained search dog named Hunter, a golden retriever. Studnick emphasized that the team only goes out to search when requested by a law enforcement agency. “It could be anyone who has jurisdiction, local police, state police, a state game warden or federal park ranger. We can’t go out for families,” he said, noting that the team had 22 calls in 2023, with three this year to date. Past assignments have included searching for youngsters with autism, elderly residents with dementia or Alzheimer’s or hikers lost in the woods. The teams are
VOL XXXII • NO 11