Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, August 6, 1995                   TAG: 9508290083
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV20   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG                                 LENGTH: Medium

MORE TO DIVING THAN MEETS THE EYE

Curtis Cook keeps an inch-thick notebook on training techniques, on every dive he's made with the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office's team and on diving schools he's attended.

Several years ago, Cook saw a need for an organized team at the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, where he's a patrol sergeant. When Ken Phipps, a retired trooper and diver for the state police, became sheriff in 1992, he gave Cook the OK. The Sheriff's Office's Underwater Investigation and Recovery Team was born.

Unlike Larry Saunders, whose dives focus on recovering bodies for the Radford Fire Department, law enforcement divers look for evidence. It could be a wallet, a stolen bicycle or car. The sheriff's four-person team once went to the James River and found guns stolen from a Pilot residence, right where the suspect had said they would be.

After attending an advanced dive school recently, Cook was at a quarry off Mud Pike Road, sharing what he had learned on search patterns, evidence collection and diver-to-shore communication with fellow divers Karen Price and Jeremy Williams.

Quarries are good training grounds, and sometimes the watery depths yield surprising treasure. "We went to the one in Ellett ... and came up with three bicycles," Cook said.

The challenge for law enforcement divers is preserving evidence so that it can be used in court.

Price and Cook sent Williams, the department's newest dive team recruit, out in the quarry with canisters to hold evidence. Submerged in the water, a Pittsburgh Steelers ballcap on his head to preserve body heat, he returned with a rock, the fake evidence of the day, enclosed in a water-filled canister.

They are careful to touch the item as little as possible. "You can get fingerprints off a gun after its been in the water," Cook said.

The diver and his line tender on the shore or boat communicate through tugs on the line. Two tugs for more line. Three means the diver's found something. Four means " help."

Using the line, the diver begins an underwater search pattern, sweeping out from an anchored buoy, with their hands often acting as eyes in the murky waters.

In Radford, Saunders and other divers have three inflated boats - two jet-ski boats with depth-finders - as well two "boogie" boards to reach a swimmer in trouble.

Radford University joined with the city to buy the equipment because the department often has had to rescue students from islands in the New River behind the Dedmon Center, said Sam Bell, a diver with the Radford Fire Department.

The river's changing depths, sudden drop-offs and sometimes swift water make it "a lot more dangerous than it looks ... it can change very rapidly," Bell said.

Unfortunately, too many ignore basic water safety. "We've never pulled anybody out with a life jacket on," Bell said.

Generally, the divers work in buddy teams or have one diver in the water while others watch from the shore, acting as spotters.

But they consider not just the risk, but what is at stake.

"If it's a child, you're going," Cook said.