They will go just about anywhere, tramp through harsh and unforgiving terrain, and sleep on church pews at night. They do it for nothing.

They are the members of the Dirigo Search and Rescue Association. For 20 years, welders, truck drivers, firefighters, teachers, and business and industrial supervisors have put their day jobs on the back burner to volunteer to search for lost people.

There are 50 active members, 25 adults and 25 high school students, in the Bangor area.

The need for an organized search team in this area became obvious in the early 1970s when a 12-year-old Boy Scout became lost during a spring camping trip at the Katahdin Scout Reservation in Eddington.

The boy became separated from his troop during a spring snowstorm, and the corresponding search was chaotic, according to Dave Martin of Orono, one of the Dirigo team’s founding members.

“There was very little coordination, and the large number of people who turned out to help was overwhelming. It was luck, not skill, that he was ever found,” said Martin.

At about the same time there was a movement in this country to develop the National Association of Search and Rescue, and a course on managing searches was introduced.

A small group of people in the Orono area began organizing, and the Dirigo Search and Rescue Team was born in 1972.

Fund-raiser events were held, equipment was purchased, and volunteers were solicited.

Each member must complete a 32-hour course, “Fundamentals of Search and Rescue.” The class includes a basic woodsman’s course, survival, map and compass, search techniques and first aid.

The work is frequently hard and tiring, but it is also satisfying, Martin said. Search members are notified, often by the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, when a person is lost.

Individual members are notified by beepers or by phone, and a meeting place is designated. A warden normally directs the search, and trained Dirigo searchers and untrained volunteer searchers are organized into a search party.

In past years, deer hunting season has been the busiest time for searchers, but Martin said classes in hunting safety have cut down on the number of hunters who get lost in the Maine woods.

Alzheimer patients and children are the most difficult people to find, Martin explained. “There is no discernible pattern to their behavior, which makes it difficult to predict what they’re going to do,” he said.

Children and Alzheimer patients are often afraid of searchers and avoid them by hiding, Martin said.

“Small children tend to wander aimlessly, and if they get tired they tend to crawl underneath something and go to sleep which makes it difficult to find them,” said Martin.

When a search is conducted in an area far from the team’s Orono base, searchers often camp out at night. They rely on the hospitality of churches, schools and civic groups to provide food and shelter, Martin said.

The team has never asked for public donations during its 20-year history. They hold public suppers, garage sales and raffles for their money, and they receive donations for providing rescue teams for canoe races each spring.

But Martin said a fund drive is now underway to help the team build a storage building and meeting place on Route 2 near the Veazie-Orono town line.

The team has never been able to store its equipment in one place or meet in the building where the equipment was stored. The equipment is now being stored in the Civil Defense bunker in Old Town, but that is a temporary arrangement, Martin said.

“We need about $30,000 to build this building,” he explained. “We are mostly concerned about storage and eventually would like to add on a meeting room.”

Martin hopes that a large mailing to thousands of people in the area will help the team achieve its goal.

“We really didn’t have a choice but to go to the public and ask for their help,” he said. “We just really need this place to remain organized and efficient.”