Sharon Rocha is a heartbroken but determined mother who wanted to somehow transform a tragedy into a force for good.
You probably remember the news story about Rocha's murdered pregnant daughter, Laci Peterson, who went missing on Christmas Eve, 2002.
During the months until Laci's body was found, Sharon was impressed by the work of the search and rescue teams.
Much to Rocha's surprise, most search and rescue in the United States is done by volunteers and she was shocked at how little funding they receive.
To rectify this situation, she created the Laci and Conner Peterson Foundation http://www.lacipeterson.com/ to provide grants to search and rescue groups.
One of the groups the foundation gave money to was Butte County Search and Rescue http://www.buttesar.org/.
The grant was used to purchase a Daniels Electronics Transportable Radio Repeater http://www.danelec.com/products/hardware/cases.asp.
Sharon Rocha can be pleased that already the Daniels repeater is helping to save lives in this part of California.
Butte County's Lt. Dan Newman explains the difference the Daniels radio has made to his organization.
"It's a real remote area. Our radios didn't work," he says noting that their searches often took them out of range of their base station.
He thinks about the changes since they got the Daniels repeater and how it's saved lives.
In particular, he's reminded of a search he was involved in last Christmas.
It was just outside of Chico, near Paradise.
There was a father, 2 boys and a girl.
They'd gone to cut down a Christmas tree but a storm came in and they got lost.
They weren't prepared.
They were just wearing jeans and instead of staying put they tried to walk back to civilization.
The problem was they kept walking in the wrong direction, further and further out of radio range.
The next day, they did the same thing.
The next day, they walked even further.
It wasn't until the fourth day that the team of 100 searchers finally located the family.
Without the Daniels Electronics Repeater, the search would not have been as well coordinated and the family may not have been found alive.
"We're using the repeater 2-3 times a month now," says Lt. Newman. "This has definitely paid for itself over and over."
Butte County purchased a Daniels VHF analog 8 watt transportable repeater with an internal battery.
For longer operations, they just hook it up to a car battery.
The radio itself is housed in a rugged polyethylene case and withstands extreme weather.
"We use it in all conditions," says Lt. Newman. "We"ve been using it for two years and it"s been working great."
Then Newman thinks back to the fact that Laci Peterson went missing at Christmas and how the family near Chico also went missing during the holiday season.
He says, "The best thing of all was we got them back in time for Christmas Eve."
