2007 Purpose Prize Winner: Wilma Melville

Wilma Melville is one of the winners of the 2007 Purpose Prize put on by Civic Ventures.

When disaster strikes and people are buried by rubble and possibly unconscious, one trained dog can often find the injured more quickly than 20 human searchers. And yet, in 1995, when Wilma Melville and her Labrador, Murphy, were called to help after the Oklahoma City bombing, there were only 15 FEMA-certified canines in the nation, all handled by volunteers.

So in 1996, Melville, then a retired physical education teacher, founded the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation. Melville started with abandoned dogs from shelters, developed an innovative program to train the dogs in about a year (instead of the previously typical two to three years), then paired the dogs with firefighters for additional training free of charge.

Today, there are 150 FEMA-certified dogs in the United States, many working side by side with firefighters, which improves disaster readiness. The Foundation has produced 85 canine-firefighter search teams, and remains the only organization in the country dedicated to partnering rescued dogs with firefighters and providing them at no cost to fire departments. The trained teams have searched for survivors after a wide range of disasters, including 9/11 and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Learn more about Wilma here: www.purposeprize.org/finalists/finalists2007/melville.cfm

Visit her website: www.searchdogfoundation.org