COEUR d'ALENE — Outdoor recreation leadership students Shannon Snell and Olivia Clausen climbed inside the Kootenai County Regional Air Support Unit ABLE 1 helicopter Tuesday morning and scoped out the interior.

"I could sit in here for a while," Snell said.

She had been in a helicopter before, but never while it was in the air.

"It's awesome," Clausen said, inspecting the ABLE 1 instrument panel, pedals and flight gear.

"I want to do this," she said. "It's a big job. It's amazing to see how much goes into it, how anyone knows what all this means."

Snell and Clausen were among dozens of students who braved the rain to speak with Kootenai County Sheriff's Office deputies and Air Support pilots as they visited the North Idaho College campus with the ABLE 1 chopper and another emergency response vehicle.

"It's exciting," Snell said. "It definitely gets me more interested in what they're talking about, being able to see the equipment they use on the daily and also just connect that to things that we do in our outdoor program."

"It's such a cool opportunity," Clausen said. "This is definitely a career our program leans to."

Outdoor recreation students mingled with criminal justice majors as deputies shared stories and tactics for backcountry search and rescue operations and marine rescue missions.

"I thought it was really cool," criminal justice student Tom Cole said, "just talking to them and learning about what they do, because I really had no idea."

He said he didn't realize how much the search and rescue teams do when they are looking for a missing person.

"They're talking about all the forests and everything," he said. "It's pretty crazy when you learn about it."

Sgt. Ryan Miller is a recreation safety supervisor with the sheriff's office who is in charge of marine, backcountry, dive, SONAR and search and rescue teams, as well as the air support unit. He said he visits NIC regularly to speak with students about career opportunities and his experiences from 16 years in law enforcement.

"Usually at least once a semester I get someone we end up hiring to either jail, patrol, marine, even other areas in the county," Miller said. "I'm able to come here and provide them information and then we end up getting future employees out of it, which is pretty cool."

The Airborne Law Enforcement, or ABLE 1, helicopter is a new resource for Kootenai County and it's the first of its kind in Idaho, Miller said.

"This is all donor funded," he said. "Obviously, helicopters aren't the cheapest pieces of equipment, but very necessary. It's a force multiplier, it gets more cops in an area in a quicker amount of time. Our response time is pretty good, not just for patrol but for search and rescue."

He said the helicopter is helpful for keeping watch over the 250,000 acres of Forest Service land in the county. It has a thermal imaging camera, a 40-million-candlepower searchlight on the back and equipment for personnel in the air to communicate with the boots on the ground.

ABLE1 is a Bell Th-67 helicopter owned by the Kootenai County Regional Air Support nonprofit. It was purchased by private donations in 2022. For ABLE 1's first two years, everything has been donated, Miller said, including time given by volunteer pilots. Taxpayers only pay for the deputies that fly in it, who would be on patrol anyway.

"Even our mechanic donates his time right now," Miller said.

The Kootenai County Regional Air Support Unit's mission is to provide aerial support and expertise to the residents of the county and the region. Its primary function is assisting in search and rescue operations, natural disasters and major law enforcement events, such as SWAT operations, shootings and riots.

Info: kcrasu.com