Saturday, October 10, 1998, Sweet Grass County SAR members found Kenneth Briggs, 73, on Sheep Mountain Ranch after he had been missing for four days.

Briggs left his home in Riverton, Wyoming on Tuesday morning, October 6.  His family reported him missing a short time later.  Police found no clue of Briggs' whereabouts until Friday evening when rancher Wayne Hansen found an abandoned car in a remote cow pasture. Deputy Mike Rodriguez inspected the car and determined that the license plates matched those of the missing man.

Sheriff George Ames activated the SAR unit Saturday morning, with Deputies Dan Tronrud, and Mike Rodriguez being instrumental in deciding on a plan of attack.

The car had many articles of clothing inside and it was a concern that Briggs, having been diagnosed with Alzheimer's only a month before, had wandered off with very little to protect him against the below freezing temperatures. Since he had been missing for so many days, the probability of finding the victim alive was low.

The vehicle overlooked a moderately downhill slope that faced east southeast. One hundred feet in front of the car was a fence line with no gate. The vehicle's battery was dead and the switch for the headlights was left on. In a generally southerly direction was a  gently downhill sloping cow pasture heavily dotted with sagebrush. This was bordered to the east by Duck Creek, and to the southwest by a cooley several hundred feet deep and nearly a quarter mile wide. The embankment that led to Duck Creek was nearly vertical in places and heavily timbered. North of the vehicle was entirely uphill.

Deputies Mike Rodriguez, Dan Tronrud, and key members of the SAR unit (Alan Ronneberg, Scott Langhus, and Brian Engle) determined that downhill and to the south of the car was the most probable area to find Briggs, and it was here that the search began. It was also decided that some searchers would cover the creek bottom and the embankment.

In the initial hours of the search, Deputy Mike Rodriguez searching with Highway Patrolman John Nicholson, found a footprint with a waffle pattern most likely from the victim. The footprint indicated travel in a southerly direction, possibly towards the lights of Livingston if he were walking at night.

Search dogs and their handlers from Absaroka Search Dogs arrived in the afternoon. With permission from the family, articles of clothing from the car were cut up and used as scent articles for the dogs. Dogs were spread out from along the creek to the south of the footprint. One dog/handler team was assigned the footprint, but the dog could not pick up a track probably because the track was too old and had little to no scent left on the ground. Instead, dogs and handlers searched the area with the rest of the searchers.     The weather at this point  in the afternoon began to deteriorate. The temperature had fallen approximately twenty degrees into the low forties and a light rain was blowing in from the mountains. If Briggs was alive, that night's weather could prove deadly.

Most searchers covered the flat or slightly downhill ground to the south of the vehicle, some covered a coolie to the south and west, and a few searched the creek to the south and east.  In effect, the area covered extended like a triangle from the vehicle in a southerly direction.     Deputy Dan Tronrud and Posse member Ron Boe discovered the victim from a distance as he sat beneath a tree. The voices and whistles of the two men startled Briggs and he made an attempt to get up. Rescuers reached Briggs within a few minutes. When he realized people were rescuers, Briggs said, "I didn't think anyone would find me." He was suffering from hypothermia and dehydration, and transported by  Help Flight Helicopter to St. Vincent's Hospital in Billings.

Later, it was determined that Briggs had an arthritic right hip and the track he covered was a semicircle to the right. This would be consistent with a right hip injury in which the right leg would take a shorter stride than the left.

Briggs was released from the hospital two days later.

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