ARAPAHOE COUNTY, Colo. — An Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office K-9 named Rex found a missing 7-year-old girl in just 12 minutes, using her shoes to track her scent.
The girl had run off from her family during a trip to the park and had been missing for about two hours when Deputy John Gray and Rex, a 5-year-old black lab, got the call.
🐾 Watch Rex in action
"It was really essential that he not only took us to the area where she went, but he communicated to us where she didn't go. So that way we knew she was kind of contained in that area," Gray said. "Being able to deploy him and see it pay off and get a girl safely home — there’s not even really words you can use to describe it.”
The rescue marks the first successful find for the Arapahoe County Sheriff's tracking team, a first-of-its-kind K-9 unit specifically trained to locate missing people. The team is made up of K-9s Rex, Bear and Riley, who trained for 16 months.
The dogs were already scent trained, according to Gray. They learned to track the ground for any disturbances and human odors as part of their specialized training for the role.
"Once you are done training, that's kind of when the training actually starts," Gray said.
Rex is considered a triple threat for the department — he was originally sworn in as a Littleton Public Schools therapy dog in 2021, where Deputy Gray serves as an School Resource Officer.
Rex later went through explosives detection training alongside K-9s Riley and Bear. Last year, the trio started the intensive missing persons tracking training.
All of these skills proved useful when Rex found the girl on April 2.
After finding her in a nearby yard, Rex immediately switched from tracking mode to therapy mode.
"They can not only smell our hormonal changes, but they can also lower our cortisol levels," Gray said. "To be able to bring some comfort to a kid in a pretty traumatic situation, I think was really important.”
The Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office told Denver7 there have been 58 missing persons cases in the county so far this year. It is why they are counting on this K-9 team to help make a difference.
"It's really cool to see an animal use such a powerful skill set to help us," Gray said. "For a missing person or somebody who's maybe even lost, you know, it's really important, because every second counts.”
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