Columnist Susan Snyder: Sometimes it pays to volunteer

Friday, Feb. 21, 2003 | 8:35 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

Rick McGough is glad to get his paycheck back.

It blew out of his truck a few weeks ago, the day Metro Search and Rescue Sgt. Clint Bassett gave it to him.

I found it stuck in the sagebrush beside Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area's Scenic Loop Road in late January. McGough's "pay" was a thank-you letter, which was safely tucked inside a weathered red envelope.

"Dear Rick,

"Thank you so much for taking time away from your family and personal life to participate in rescuing me out of the canyon. I greatly appreciate it and wanted to let you know that you all made it as pleasant of an experience that it could be."

The letter promised homemade cookies and thanked those who go "above and beyond the call of duty." Shelly Olivadoti, a Las Vegas physical therapist, made good on the promise of goodies and wrote a letter to all 15 of the rescuers who plucked her from Red Rock's Juniper Canyon after she fell during a Dec. 7 bouldering trip with friends.

The letters and Christmas cookies are more pay than Metro Search and Rescue workers typically receive. All 30 are volunteers. The only paid staff are the helicopter pilots, six team leaders and Bassett, who heads the program.

McGough and his coworkers rappel from dizzying heights, shimmy through skinny caves and hike long distances toting injured people out of the back-country tangles they've stumbled into.

"What more noble a line of work than something that affects someone's life in a positive way and possibly saves it?" McGough said earlier this week when contacted about his lost "paycheck."

McGough, senior vice president for customer services at Las Vegas' First National Bank of Marin, didn't even rock-climb before he joined the rescue program six years ago.

"I'm 6-foot-1 and 225 pounds. I'm affectionately known as a member of the mule team," he said. "I can pick up heavy things and carry them to other places."

Equipment. People. Whatever.

Olivadoti isn't heavy, but she definitely became cargo when she slipped about four hours into the December hike with her boyfriend and another couple. She fell about four feet, landing on her twisted ankle. It later turned out to be a bad sprain, but it was worthless for hiking out.

Her friends carried her and helped her slide boulder-to-boulder on her heinie for about an hour until they could get a cell phone signal and call for help. McGough and the other rescuers arrived by helicopter minutes later.

"These guys carried me up-canyon for a half-hour to where the helicopter could land and they could load me in. It was bouldering the whole way," she said.

Where the helicopter can land is, in itself, pretty amazing.

"They'll put one skid down on a surface no bigger than your desk, and we'll get out," McGough said.

They'll get out for free, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Christmas, anniversaries, birthdays. When the pager goes off, these people come running.

"It's incredible," Olivadoti said. "They're volunteers. Most of the time, people don't even call them to thank them."

But some people send a letter. Can't take that to the bank, but at least one banker still appreciates it.