Remembering Maximus: The Case That Started It All

Some cases stay with you. Maximus is one of them.

This video has lived on the MOV Drone Workz YouTube channel since March 2024, but today we're sharing it here for the first time because Max deserves to be remembered, and his story deserves to be understood as the heartbeat behind everything Pet Search Alliance has become.

We had literally just found a dog. We were hyped, energized, running on adrenaline, and the call came in. Fourteen-year-old Lab mix, partially blind, diabetic, missing from his Vincent, Ohio home. We were fifteen minutes away. We went.

In fifteen minutes of flight time, our thermal drone located Maximus hidden in a dense ravine just 75 yards from his front door, invisible to the naked eye and unreachable without guidance. Jeremy Patterson, volunteer firefighter and my co-pilot that day, went in without hesitation. He carried Max out.

The reunion we prayed for became a goodbye. But it was a goodbye surrounded by family, by comfort, by love, and that matters more than most people know. We were able to give his family those final hours. That is not nothing. That is everything.

This was our second drone. We had no infrastructure, no organization, no roadmap. What we had was a thermal camera, a willingness to show up, and the growing realization that nobody else in the Mid-Ohio Valley was doing this, not for pets. Drone operators existed but they were focused on locating game, not lost animals. We were the first, available 24/7, and cases like Max showed us exactly why that mattered.

Three drones in now. Hundreds of searches. A team of volunteers and supporters who show up in the dark, in the cold, in terrain that doesn't want to give anything back.

Max is the reason. Cases like his are the reason so many of us find this work not just meaningful, but necessary.

Watch the video. Keep tissues nearby. And know that every search we run, every dog brought home, every family spared the not knowing, carries a little piece of him with it.

Huge gratitude to every volunteer, supporter, and community member who has been part of this journey. You are moving the needle. 🐾