Sonja Nordstrom has more than 30 years of experience in helping solve cold cases, finding missing military members and honoring those lost to history using canine detectives.
She and her two trained dogs will give a live demonstration in the Echo cemetery following her presentation Saturday, June 21.
Sandra Morrison is a historian and board of trustees member for the Echo Community and Historical Organization, or ECHO. She said the church was built in 1876 and will celebrate its 150th birthday next year.
“Echo, at the mouth of Echo Canyon, is basically the gateway to Summit County and Utah,” Morrison said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour” Tuesday. “It’ s the site of the Pony Express and the Lincoln Highway and the Mormon pioneers and mountain men. People that came to Utah pretty much came through that corridor. So, there's a lot of history.”
Morrison said Nordstrom contacted the church authorities, asking to train her dogs at the nearby cemetery.
“There's always the urban legend that there's unmarked graves in every cemetery,” Morrison said. “And a lot of discussion in Echo, of course, it would be about Chinese [workers] possibly buried in unmarked graves. The Chinese built the railroad, the transcontinental, which came through Echo.”
Nordstrom said part of her lecture will cover the different types of search dogs and their abilities.
“When you go out to cover a mountain, you may send trailing dogs, tracking dogs, that are looking for a scent specific to one individual,” she said. “Or you may send them that, or basically coursing the air like more of an upland game dog looking for a bird, right? They don't have to know the specific bird they're looking for. When it goes to human remains, we're training the full spectrum of human odor: decomposition, all the way down to very, very old dry bone.”
The historic church in Echo on Temple Lane off Echo Road is open every Saturday through Labor Day weekend from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Nordstrom’s lecture starts at 4 p.m. Admission is free.
