GRANITE FALLS — Emma Loney hadn’t lost her first baby tooth before she began attending Snohomish County Search and Rescue meetings.
She would show up with her dad, often entertaining herself by reading or coloring while the grown-ups discussed missions, training, schedules and whatever else needed to be covered.
These days, the Granite Falls teen is no longer the quiet child in the background. She’s a part of the team, helping search for lost and injured hikers or missing Alzheimer’s patients.
In 2015, she spent more than 80 hours involved in search and rescue training, meetings and missions.
Her contributions last August impressed search and rescue leaders. In one case, she noticed a member of the team lagging behind after the rescue of a distraught woman who had gone off the trail on Mount Pilchuck. Emma checked in with her incident commander and dropped back to make sure her fellow searcher was safe.
Three weeks later, she was chosen to join a small group of firefighters heading up a trail to help a hiker with an injured knee on the Heather Lake Trail east of Granite Falls.
On Thursday, Emma will be among 61 people to receive 47 awards as a part of the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office annual awards ceremony.
For Emma, search and rescue is not about personal recognition. She understands that being part of the team can be like a pyramid of support. Every brick, whether at the base or the top, is important.
A big reason she joined is being around people she admires, she said.
“They have always seemed like a second family,” Emma said. “We are a pretty good tight-knit group. I know that sounds cliche, but everyone who is there wants to help people and we take care of each other too.”
Emma, 16, has been on the receiving end of search and rescue volunteers taking care of her and that goes well beyond the gift of an ice ax.
Two years ago, Emma began feeling lethargic. She’d always been involved in sports, from basketball to taekwondo, and was one of two girls on the Granite Falls Middle School wrestling team at the time. Her elbows began to swell. Doctors initially thought that she might have juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.
It turned out she had leukemia, a cancer affecting her blood. She spent more than a month at Seattle Children’s Hospital and made roughly 100 trips back and forth from Granite Falls for chemotherapy, blood transfusions and other appointments.
Instead of waiting for her hair to fall out, she had her head shaved with the exception of a strip of pink, blue, purple and green locks.
Many in search and rescue shaved their heads in a show of support, including its leader, sheriff’s Sgt. Danny Wikstrom, who nominated Emma for the Explorer Unit letter of commendation she is due to receive Thursday.
Emma inspires those around her, he said.
“She gives me hope for the future,” Wikstrom said. “She is so smart, so kind, so strong.”
Emma knitted him a cap after his head was shaved, a gesture that the sergeant still finds touching to this day.
Emma joined search and rescue after the cancer diagnosis, getting training in a number of disciplines, such as bone immobilization, hypothermia, radio communications and controlling bleeding.
“There was nothing I could do for myself but I could do things for other people,” she said.
Mike Loney has been called out for countless missions over the years.
He is pleased to have his daughter’s company these days.
“I’m proud of how she has come into it,” he said. “She is very dedicated.”
Just how long Emma will be part of Snohomish County Search and Rescue is hard to say.
She is taking high school and community college credits through the Ocean Research College Academy marine biology program at Everett Community College. She is considering a major in geophysics and a career in glaciology. She is looking at universities in Alaska, California and Colorado.
She spent 10 days on Mount Baker last summer exploring glaciers and alpine landscapes through a “Girls On Ice” program offered through the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
This summer, she plans to take part in the National Outdoor Leadership School in the Waddington Range in a remote stretch of British Columbia, Canada.
It is hard to say where her studies and career will take her, but she wants to remain involved in search and rescue.
“I hope that wherever I go, I can be involved in something like this,” she said.
Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446; stevick@heraldnet.com.
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