Osceola County, FL – On October 25, 2023, Osceola Sheriff Marcos Lopez announced a new partnership with the Senior Resource Alliance and Scent Evidence K9 to enhance the K9 search capabilities of the Osceola Sheriff’s K9 Unit for finding missing persons.
As part of this new partnership, K9 brothers Doc and Luke, who are scent discriminate bloodhounds, will be joining the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office K9 Unit, thanks to the Senior Resource Alliance. Doc and Luke were trained by Scent Evidence K9 specially to search and locate missing individuals by using a person’s unique scent.
In addition, approximately 750 Scent Preservation Kits were donated. These kits will help the bloodhounds and their handlers find missing persons.
This new resource aims to help households with a family member with a cognitive or psychological challenge, such as dementia, that could make them wander into harmful or dangerous situations. The Scent Evidence Kit includes an uncontaminated scent article to conduct an accurate search and an Individual Preparedness Flash Drive that allows family members and caregivers to save individual information. The Scent Kit also includes a variety of materials to help family members and caregivers preserve necessary items to help K9s in their search. For more information, visit: Scent Evidence K9.
The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office will offer the Scent Preservation Kits to the community to help find missing children, juveniles, and senior citizens. Interested residents should visit our website, Osceola County Sheriff’s Office, for more information or contact our Community Services Department at 407-348-1190.
“We are grateful for this partnership to help our K9 Unit and their handlers search and find missing persons. This enhancement will enable us to locate missing loved ones even more efficiently and effectively”, said Sheriff Marcos Lopez.