Mountain man joins area search team

Pediatrician, teacher complete Sheriff's Academy, begin one-year period of probation.

By Josh Kleinbaum
News-Press

August 9, 2003

MONTROSE — When John Rodarte takes trips to Tijuana three or four times a year with a group of doctors called Healing Hearts Across Borders, he knows he won't have the best facilities in which to work. So he makes sure to bring the proper supplies.

"I bring things like shoelaces, in case a woman goes into labor and I have to tie off an umbilical chord," said Rodarte, a doctor at Descanso Pediatrics in La Cañada Flintridge. "It's the creative part of medicine, I like to think."

Now Rodarte will use that creativity to help find and treat missing people in the Montrose area. Rodarte is one of two recent graduates of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Academy who will join the Montrose Search and Rescue Team.

Linda Daniels, a teacher for the Glendale Unified School District who lives in La Crescenta, also graduated from the academy. Rodarte and Daniels are probationary members of the search and rescue team for the next year while they receive more training. Daniels is on vacation and was unavailable for comment this week.

"We did a fund-raiser in October where we were looking for new team members, and approximately 40 people showed up," Capt. Jay Paneno said. "We ended up with these two."

Of those 40, only Rodarte and Daniels passed the sheriff's background investigation, the team's requirements and the academy.

"I've always loved the outdoors and adventure-type stuff, and being in medicine myself, I thought I could utilize my skills," said Rodarte, who did not know about the team until seeing an advertisement for the October meeting.

Rodarte, 34, has been interested in the outdoors since childhood, when his father was a Boy Scout leader. As he got older, he moved on to more adventurous outdoors activities such as rock climbing, white-water rafting and mountain climbing.

He served as the team doctor on a nine-man expedition that climbed Mt. Whitney, and he is planning an expedition up Mt. Kilimanjaro next year.

"We had people getting altitude sickness and I was worried about stroke symptoms," Rodarte said of the Mt. Whitney trip. "You just go back to the basics. It's all about talking to the patient, examining the patient, and utilizing what you have in the field with you."

In the Sheriff's Academy, Rodarte experienced adventures of a different sort. Before the six-month class, he'd never fired a gun. Now, he has been to a gun-cleaning party.

"I never imagined that one," Rodarte said.