Courtney brings years of Search and Rescue experience to the OSRE program offerings. As a professional educator in the medical field, she is able to blend these backgrounds into a great instructional style. An experienced backpacker and SAR team Crew Chief, she has a great love for the outdoors and plenty of real world experiance to share.
Sarah Beth Helms planted her roots in wildness medicine in 1998 when she took a wilderness first aid course through Benton County Search and Rescue. She has been hooked on self rescue skills and wilderness survival since. She loves to travel and explore the different cultures mostly within the United States. Her free time is filled with kayaking, rafting, caving, riding her Harley, scuba diving, and taking her three dogs hiking. She has a great love for ropes and technical rescue with most of her experience being in swiftwater rescue and cave rescue. She is able to keep her medical skills up to date as her full time job is as an emergency room Registered Nurse in a level one trauma center. One of her favorite challenges includes applying her medical knowledge and skills to the wilderness setting and providing excellent patient care without the resources of the level one trauma center! With her prehospital experience and her WEMT she is able to think outside the box and has been able to make expedition trips more comfortable and a better experience for people in need of medical care.
Through her EMS and pre-hospital work, she has seen first hand how taxing a seemingly simple rescue can be on an entire community. Therefore, she is a great believer that education opens doors and loves the opportunity to share her experiences with others in hopes of making their outdoor trips safer and giving them the tools to make their mishaps manageable.
Lorraine has been a kayaker since the age of eight and has paddled extensively throughout North and South America.
A teacher by profession, her smooth and concise presentation style is fun and effective. She is heavily involved in her local paddling community and is a past Commodore and Safety Director of the North Texas River Runners. A former EMT and currently wilderness medicine educated, she is a strong lead whitewater instructor and water safety professional.