Today we’d like to introduce you to Paul Lake.
Hi Paul, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I grew up in a law enforcement family having an uncle and an older brother in the FBI. The brother returned from Washington DC to become a State Trooper and eventually moved over to the Sheriff’s Department, so I was exposed to multiple levels of that world and got it into my blood at an early age. However, I was blessed with artistic skills and eventually chose a career path in the field of architectural design. But the desire to serve in emergency services at some capacity never subsided. At age 21 I became a reserve deputy and an EMT in my hometown. After a few years I was transferred to another state for work and joined a fire rescue team as an EMT. It was there I began to think about the Search and Rescue (SAR) field. In 1980 my career brought me to the Dallas area where I began to look for a SAR team to join. In those days there was nothing operating here so I ended up with an organization that specialized in emergency medical services. After a couple of years of trying to lead that group toward SAR I gave up and started to plan how to start at SAR team from scratch. I basically built a business plan for a regional non-profit and sent it to all of the major law enforcement agencies in the area. My question to them was essentially; if I build it, will you come? All said yes, so in 1983 I began by hand selecting six men you could walk and chew gum at the same time and put them through about a year’s worth of training.
In the beginning we were ground search management specialist and trained man trackers. We not only did not have dogs on the team, we didn’t even know that was a thing at the time. A couple of years in we had an Airforce vet join with his military K9 and showed us what dogs could accomplish. That changed our profile and as they say the rest is history. Today we are in our 43rd year serving North Central Texas and surrounding areas with specially trained dogs helping law enforcement locate lost and missing people. We are one of the oldest teams in the state and one of the busiest in the nation. We average about 10 calls for service per month, plus we train for four hours every weekend.
Search One Rescue Team is a 501 C3 non-profit that can only be activated by a governmental agency, and we do not charge for our services. We receive no governmental support, and our annual funding comes from individuals and corporations inside our service area.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
In the early years the team was an unknown and unproven entity, so user agencies were reluctant to call us out to help. When they did call it was usually as a last resort after significant time had passed making our job even more difficult than normal.
After several years of minimal calls but always providing professional results, the team became a respected resource with a valued reputation. The annual call rate began to increase each year and now we are consistently in triple digit callout numbers every year.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
While my love for law enforcement and emergency medicine led me into Search and Rescue my fascination with law enforcement stayed strong just below the surface. After moving to Dallas and starting Search One Rescue Team (SORT), I had worked my way up the corporate ladder to VP of a national design / build firm. But I was still drawn so strongly to law enforcement I went to night school and became a reserve officer in the Dallas area thinking that would scratch my itch. It didn’t. A few years later I cashed in the stock I had with my company and became a fulltime police officer. And eventually became a K9 officer as well.
After several years in a fulltime position, I elected to transition back to the corporate world. When I did, I was able to plug back into my church and discovered they had no type of safety program. Using my law enforcement and corporate management backgrounds I developed a safety team using users and greeters. After a few years other churches in the area began to notice what we were doing and asked if I would help them do the same. From that I started a ministry to help churches build their own safety programs and continued that for about ten years. Eventually it grew to the point I needed to leave the corporate world again to turn it into a full-time consulting business. It’s a sad statement that someone can make a living teaching churches all over the US how to stay safe, but that is indeed the world in which we live. The name of that business is Sentry One Consulting Group, Inc.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
Find something you are passionate about and commit to it. If you can get paid to do something that you enjoy and brings you satisfaction your life is significantly less stressful.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.searchone.org and sentryoneconsulting.com
