Yavapai County K-9 Cash helps bring closure to family after deadly flash floods

YAVAPAI COUNTY, Ariz. - A search and rescue K-9 was instrumental in bringing closure to a family after their loved one died in the recent flash floods in Yavapai County, according to officials.

Meet Cash:

"You ready to work buddy? You ready? Set!" said Heather Lum, a search responder with the Yavapai County Search and Rescue Team.

Lum is speaking to Cash, a five-year-old dog who has been part of Yavapai County’s search and rescue K-9 team for over four years now. While other K-9 members of the team work on live searches, Cash is a certified cadaver dog, which means he is trained to locate deceased humans.

"And in particular, he’s certified in a whole host of sub-disciplines, including basic land and large area searching, crime scene, so very small, vehicles, buildings, fire areas and what was most relevant in this case, which is water and shoreline searching," Lum said.

The Search for Benny Sutton:

The case Lum, who is Cash’s handler, is referencing is the multi-day search for 63-year-old Benny Sutton, whose pickup truck was swept away in flash floods earlier this month.

Sutton was on his way to work at Castle Hot Springs Resort on November 1 when the flooding hit. Crews found his body in Lake Pleasant on November 6.

"I wanna stress that this was a team effort. There were countless search responders out there, groundpounding, looking for clues. Other K-9 units in addition to mine, but in particular, Cash was able to locate with pretty good indications that there was something in the water, at which point they brought in other resources to come in and locate Mr. Sutton," Lum said.

Inside a Training Session:

Hundreds of hours of training go into making Cash such an important part of the search and rescue team, but it is a tool he was born with that might make him the best of the searchers.

"We still don’t have the technology to replicate the dog’s nose. They can smell a drop of blood in an Olympic-sized pool and, so, the ability to cover a large area, we would be spending the same hours on what takes him minutes," Lum said.

Lum and Cash gave FOX 10 a behind-the-scenes look at how a training session works.

"I will give him a search command," Lum said, then giving the verbal "get to work" command. "When he locates a source, what he’ll do is he will sit and often times he’ll look at me until I give him his reward."

'Focused on the mission':

The team’s work is not easy, but it is an important part of bringing resolution to a family without answers.

"The only solace that we can take is that we played a small part in at least helping bring closure to the family," Lum said. "We’re all volunteers, with the exception of the sheriff’s office itself, so we are really focused on the mission which is helping bring missing individuals home."

Lum says when Cash is not on the clock, he enjoys going on hikes, running at the dog park and cuddling with her and just about any person he meets. Lum added that Cash is not a big fan of water, which makes him a more useful water searcher, because he isn’t tempted to jump in.

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