Team Info
Task Force: California Task Force 2 (CA-TF2)
Agency: Los Angeles County Fire
Level: FEMA Certified
Search Dog Info
Breed: Belgian Malinois
Sex: Female
Born: June 20, 2014
Donated by an anonymous donor
Recruited by Trevor Lawrence
Prep Home: Darrell & Heather Wilkerson
Sponsors: Mary & Jeff Kroll
Guardians: Berkeley Meigs
At the beginning of 2015, SDF staff were contacted by a canine trainer from the Salt Lake City, UT area, who had been working with a client’s beautiful, yet unruly, Belgian Malinois that she felt was destined for more than life as a pet. The trainer had spoken with the young dog’s owners and they had agreed that if the right place was found, they would consider transferring ownership of Diva into a working field where she could put her skills to use.
SDF connected Diva’s trainer with one of our handlers on Utah Task Force 1, Trevor Lawrence, and he met and evaluated Diva shortly after. Trevor agreed that Diva had much to offer as an urban disaster search and rescue canine, and he saw her through the process of making sure she was medically fit for this line of work before she was transported to SDF’s National Training Center in Santa Paula, CA.
From the time she entered training, SDF trainers continually reported things like, “She is going to be such a nice search dog! She is a lot of fun to have around and work with… (and) will move along quickly through this program. We are so pleased with this little superstar!”
Diva proved to be an ideal canine candidate and was paired with a handler as part of California Task Force 2 (CA-TF2) on January 22, 2016. Together, Diva and her first handler responded to several deployments, proving her skill and expertise as a search dog.
In 2021, Diva’s first handler made a career transition, and with Diva’s best interest in mind, decided to pass the leash to a new handler to allow her thriving career as a search dog to continue. On May 28, 2021, Diva was paired with Los Angeles County firefighter Cory Baldovin, a teammate as part of CA-TF2.
The new duo achieved certification with the Federal Emergency Management Agency in October 2021 and continued to train regularly with their CA-TF2 teammates in preparation for deployment. They were called upon to do just that when a devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Turkey, Syria and the surrounding region early on February 6, 2023.