Verde Search and Rescue K-9 Sgt. Jennifer Brehler is the 2025 Iron Woman of the Year for her K-9 work with all-volunteer Yavapai Sheriff’s Auxiliary Force.
VSAR cited her leadership and work of 845 total hours, 74 trainings and 26 call-outs to locate missing hikers. Last year’s recipient was Cindy De Sa Valente.
“I spend my [volunteering] time on the weekends, after hours,” Brehler said. “It’s just a passion. … I just find the time where I can, and I do use up a lot of my vacation time to do trainings. But that’s okay, because that’s how I like to use my time.”
Brehler’s “undying energy and ability to maintain a full time job and commit to us so much, and commit to the K-9 program — she runs our K-9 program,” VSAR Capt. Dondi West said. “That is just amazing. She works so hard to start a program, maintain it, and then keep her people qualified. That’s just phenomenal.”
After first moving to the Verde Valley in 2019 to be the executive director of the Humane Society of Sedona, Brehler first took interest in VSAR in October of that year and became an official member after completing her certifications in May 2020.
“It’s funny, … I joined search and rescue because I need something outside of the animal world,” Brehler said. “I’m passionate about helping people and serving my community, and about a year into doing that with search and rescue, they were like, ‘you like dogs. And what do you think about starting a K-9 unit?’”
The K-9 unit now consists of four handlers and six dogs, including Brehler and her K-9s: Ivy, a 4- year-old dual-purpose golden retriever who does area finds and can locate human remains, and Sava, a 3-year-old German shepherd who does area finds and is currently training to locate human remains.
“There’s three disciplines that our K-9 unit focuses on, and that’s trailing, which is live find trailing,” Brehler said. “They’re scent specific. So say, somebody with dementia wanders away from their home. We have scent articles. We have their home. The dogs work on lead. It’s a 30 foot line, and we work behind them. So they drag us through all the scrub oak and cactuses and down into ravines, it’s a lot of work.”
The other live find discipline is area-wilderness search, where the VSAR K-9 unit deploys dogs working off lead, and sometimes on lead near busy roads, each equipped with a GPS tracking collar that is due for replacement in a few years. The dogs range freely, clearing 80 to 100 acres.
“Those [missions] are not scent specific,” Brehler said. “Their role is to find any human out in that area and if it’s the person we’re looking for, wonderful. If it’s somebody who we’re not looking for, we let them know what we’re doing out there. We give them a description of who we’re looking for. We ask them if they’ve seen anybody or heard anything while they’ve been in that area.”
The final discipline the unit focus on is locating human remains.
Breher said she was certified as a VSAR technical ropes operator in November, in order to have a larger skill set in case the K-9 unit itself needs to be able to self-rescue from a dangerous situation during a call out; as well a certification in land navigation.
“She wants to be that all around person that can really help out and be on all of the teams,” West said.
“We train twice a week in order for our dogs to be proficient at what we want them to do,” Breher said. “But also, as a VSAR member, we are our unit. We consider ourselves ground-pounders. Our main role, with or without dogs, is to get out there and help people.”
VSAR meetings are held from January through November on the second Monday of each month at 6:30 p.m. at SFD Station 3 at 125 Slide Rock Road in the Village of Oak Creek. For more information, visit verdesar.org or contact verdesarposse@gmail.com (928) 771-3281.
