Dec. 25 -- Blaze is a friendly Labrador and golden retriever mix who regularly spends time with students at Finley's River View High School.
But when she's not comforting students in need, she's the Tri-Cities' newest tool for catching child predators.
That's because she is one of four dogs in Washington state trained to smell a compound that keeps the circuit boards in electronic devices from overheating.
She can find cellphones, hard drives and mini storage device cards that can hold thousands of images and hundreds of hours of child pornography.
Blaze joined the Benton County Sheriff's Office in November after months of training at Jordan Detection K9. The company takes dogs that failed other service programs and trains them to find electronic storage devices.
Benton County Sheriff Tom Croskrey told the Tri-City Herald that he wanted to fill that need in the Tri-Cities area.
Electronic storage device detection dogs have been around for more than a decade.
They made headlines after a Labrador Retriever named "Bear" helped find a USB drive in the home of Jared Fogle, the former Subway restaurant spokesman.
The dog was able to sniff out a thumb drive that police missed during a search of Fogle's Indiana home, according to news accounts.
The same dog went to Seattle in 2015.
When the sheriff's office went looking for a dog, they turned to the same man who trained Bear, Travis Jordan, in Indianapolis.
The dog cost about $10,000. The Benton County Sheriff's Foundation paid for the dog and the Kennewick Police Foundation purchased supplies for the animal. The nonprofit agencies raise money to help support officers, the community and police dog programs.
Croskrey asked Deputy Brett Hansen, a previous K-9 officer, to work with Blaze. He spent two weeks in Indianapolis learning how to work with the dog. He now trains daily with Blaze.
"I've got SIM cards, USB drives. I've got old digital cameras. I got a bunch of old phones," he said. "So every day we set those up in the garage, in the bedroom, here at the school. I threw a bunch of phones out in the field there."
When Blaze finds an electronic device, she will sit down next to it and blows air out of her nose. Sometimes she will paw at the area where the electronic device is.
"They'll get the general area where you can tell the detectives, 'Hey you probably need to search this area better,'" Hansen said.
While she hasn't been able to put her skills to work on a search warrant, Hansen said she should be able to do so soon. Yakima police, which got its police dog Router at the same time as Blaze, has already been successful in helping solve a case.
Hansen is excited about the possibilities for using electronic storage detection dogs for other needs, such as finding people who are lost but still have electronic devices on them.
Comfort Dog
Along with working with Blaze, Hansen is the school resource officer at River View High and the marine patrol deputy.
In his 21-year career, being a K-9 officer is his favorite job in police work, he said. He previously had a German Shepard.
It's also a good position for Blaze, who is about 20 months old. She still has a lot of puppy energy and gets to spend time with the students.
"There's been a few kids that have had some really rough days that have come in to just sit there on the floor in the corner and pet her for 45 minutes to an hour," Hansen said. "It's actually been really fun to watch."
He will sometimes take the dog out into the hallway while classes are switching so students can spend time with her.
Some teachers mentioned to Hansen how much they appreciate having a dog around.
Once she takes off her work vest for the day, she plays with the other dogs at Hansen's home.
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