posted July 07, 2004 11:02 AM         

Denny Adams's Bloodhound
Helped Find the Missing --
And His Master's Calling
By JONATHAN EIG
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
July 7, 2004; Page A1

When Erika Dalquist's body was discovered last month in Brainerd, Minn., her family decided that the funeral should pay tribute not only to 21-year-old Erika but also to those who had helped find her.

So on a sunny June day, hundreds of people crowded into the Lakewood Evangelical Free Church. Seated in the chapel were dozens of law-enforcement officers and hundreds of friends and neighbors who had searched for Erika over the course of 19 months.

In the front row, seated on the floor next to Minnesota's governor, Tim Pawlenty, was a bloodhound named Calamity Jane. Denny Adams, the dog's owner, says he told the governor, "You should be honored that you're sitting next to her."

For 10 years, Mr. Adams and Calamity had traveled the country looking for murder victims, lost hunters and escaped convicts -- usually for no pay.

Before the Dalquist investigation, Mr. Adams and Calamity spent more than three months last winter in Grand Forks, N.D., hunting along frozen rivers and through snowbanks for another 21-year-old woman, Dru Sjudin. Humans found both bodies, but some people say Calamity led the searchers to the right neighborhoods. By the time the two searches were over, 10-year-old Calamity was the most famous dog in the Midwest, the subject of dozens of newspaper and television stories.

Denny Adams and Calamity Jane

When Ms. Dalquist's funeral ended, the dog was slow getting up. Mr. Adams couldn't tell whether she was exhausted or forlorn.

Mr. Adams, 59 years old, bought Calamity as a pup. He thought he was buying a search dog, but he got a partner and friend. Together, they found a calling.

Mr. Adams had spent 20 years in the Air Force, working mostly as a criminal investigator. He retired in 1985 and, with his first wife, managed a restaurant in Raynesford, Mont., called the Kibby Korner Kafe.

But he missed the action of law enforcement. A friend suggested that he might enjoy owning a bloodhound. Most police departments can't afford to keep search dogs, so they often turn to dog owners -- working as volunteers -- when they need help tracking a missing person.

Bloodhounds have been used for centuries to track people. With their big, broad snouts, the gentle animals have a sense of smell many thousand times greater than human beings do. They can track a person for miles and pick him out of a crowded room. They can be trained to recognize the smell of human remains and to find them, even under water.

"Some dogs will do the work, but they don't really have their hearts in it," says Glenn Rimbey, the Montana breeder who sold Calamity to Mr. Adams for $500 in 1993. Mr. Rimbey and other bloodhound owners who saw the dog perform agreed: Calamity was special.

Mr. Adams began spending more time with the dog and less time in the restaurant. He and Calamity traveled around the country to bloodhound training seminars and ran drills on the land around Mr. Adams's house. Calamity learned to sniff at clothing and track ribbons of scent through miles of rough terrain. She learned not to bark lest she reveal her position while pursuing a criminal suspect. Mr. Adams learned to trust his dog's instincts.

Calamity preferred to ride in the passenger seat of his pickup. She liked to sleep in front of the television, not outside with the hunting dogs Mr. Adams kept. She smiled and chattered her teeth when Mr. Adams offered her a cookie. Mr. Adams decided he could do without human partners.

"Dogs don't get coffee, they don't smoke," he said. "Calamity was a silent partner. She was like an extension of myself, but she was wiser than I am in so many ways."

Though Mr. Adams isn't associated with any law-enforcement agency, he carries a gun and a badge that he had made. It says "Bloodhound Search Dogs" on it. His light-blue truck has a flashing light and a siren.

He eventually bought several more bloodhounds, but none could keep up with Calamity. Local law-enforcement officials in Montana began calling for assistance. "He was very helpful," says Robert Jones, chief of police in Great Falls, where Mr. Adams helped on several cases.

As more calls came for help, Mr. Adams lost interest in the restaurant. By 2000, Mr. Adams had divorced, remarried and moved to Conde, S.D. His second wife, Kathy, is a Spink County sheriff's deputy and a lover of bloodhounds. Ms. Adams, who says she makes about $27,000 a year, supplies almost all of the household income.

Last January, Bob Heales, a private investigator who was working for the Sjudin family, called and asked Mr. Adams to come to Grand Forks to help search for Dru. There would be no pay, but some of his expenses would be covered. Three days later, Mr. Adams loaded Calamity and a hound of his named Molly into his pickup and drove 150 miles north. Mr. Adams shared a motel room with his dogs and took them both out on searches.

Some law-enforcement officials were troubled by the attention paid to Mr. Adams and other free-lance searchers. Several bloodhound owners showed up, as did dowsers toting divining rods and psychics. "A lot of people get involved in these things for a lot of different reasons," says Maj. Mike Fonder of the Grand Forks County Sheriff's Department.

But Mr. Adams and his dogs kept searching after most of the free-lancers had quit. Calamity focused much of her attention on an area surrounding Red Lake River. And on April 17, two searchers found Dru's body in a ditch near there. Mr. Heales, the private investigator, credited Calamity with keeping the search focused on the right area. "When you look at the thousands of miles we covered," Mr. Heales said, "it's amazing that she kept us in an area of importance."

Mr. Adams never claimed credit for finding Dru's body. "I'm glad she was found," he says. "It didn't matter to us who found her."

Three weeks after the discovery, Mr. Adams and his two dogs went to Brainerd to begin looking for Ms. Dalquist, who had been missing since October 2002.

Police had been unable to search an area of interest -- a piece of land owned by the family of William Gene Myears, the prime suspect in the case. (He was later arrested and charged with the girl's murder.) But the Myears family granted Mr. Adams permission to search the land with his dogs.

The Myears ranch was covered with thick groves of trees and swampy soil. Mr. Adams and Calamity began searching at 4 p.m. They were joined by Mr. Heales and Nolan Baldwin, who is Mr. Adams's cousin, as well as by several members of the Myears family. Mr. Adams, trying to cover a large, heavily wooded area, decided to let Calamity work off the leash.

After 20 minutes, as the searchers passed through a cluster of trees, Calamity lowered her nose to the ground and began to zigzag as if following a scent. Mr. Baldwin said it was clear the dog was onto something. At about 6 p.m., she emerged from the timber and walked into a meadow. Suddenly, a strong northern wind blasted across the meadow and Calamity took off into it, according to three witnesses.

"Now, I knew she was downwind from a cadaver," Mr. Adams says.

The only trouble was that Mr. Adams could no longer find his dog. She had bolted into another crop of trees. After 30 minutes, some of the searchers went to get their horses. Several people who lived nearby saddled up to help, according to Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Heales. Mr. Adams got in his truck and drove the roads around the ranch, then put on chest waders to walk through the bogs.

At 7:30, one of the neighbors, searching in the direction that Calamity had run, found Erika's remains. Mr. Adams suspected that Calamity had stayed with the body for some time and then gone off looking for him.

Police secured the crime scene. At about 3:30 in the morning, wet and tired, Calamity made her way to Erika's remains and sat down beside them. Two sheriff's deputies spotted her and helped her into the back of their squad car.

When Mr. Adams tried to pick her up and carry her to his truck, she refused to go. "She just seemed almost like you'd let the air out of her," he said. "She just wanted to lay her head down and rest."

They got back to their hotel at about 7:30 a.m., cleaned up, then skipped the press conference scheduled for that afternoon and drove home. Later, Sheriff Eric Klang of Crow Wing County said Calamity played "an important role" in Erika's discovery.

Back home in South Dakota, the dog never seemed to recover from her fatigue. Mr. Adams had always enjoyed the fact that Calamity was so calm, but now she seemed listless.

On June 4, Mr. and Mrs. Adams and Calamity drove back to Brainerd for Erika's funeral. Outside the church, mourners released balloons and butterflies. When the service began, Gov. Pawlenty patted Calamity on the head.

The next day, Mr. Adams took Calamity to a veterinarian in South Dakota. Blood tests showed she had a bacterial infection. She was treated with antibiotics but didn't respond.

The last time Mr. Adams saw her, at the vet's office, she put her head in his lap. He kissed her on the forehead. He left one of his shirts in her kennel so she could remember his scent. He got in his truck to drive home. Ten minutes after he left, she died.

Obituaries ran in newspapers throughout the Dakotas and Minnesota. Since then, about 100 condolence cards have arrived at Mr. Adams's home. One person wrote: "I have been keeping a scrapbook about Calamity Jane's efforts and know that she will be long remembered for her service to mankind!"

Mr. Adams, who has had five heart attacks and suffers from diabetes, says he never thought he would outlive his best dog. His wife says, "I worry about him without Calamity. Calamity was his rock."

But Mr. Adams says Calamity taught him not to give up. Last week, a call came from Chisholm, Minn., asking for help in the search for a missing 6-year-old girl. He plans to take Molly, the other bloodhound that accompanied him on some of his trips last winter. Molly isn't perfect. She barks too much and won't sleep in the house and doesn't eat cookies. But Mr. Adams says she's learning.

Write to Jonathan Eig at jonathan.eig@wsj.com1

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