When Lily Albrecht’s phone vibrates during Latin class, she knows it’s time to roll. She packs up her belongings and curtails her test, informing her teacher that she has been summoned for a search and rescue mission. Maybe the call regards a crazy naked woman, lost in the forest and in need of salvation. Or maybe someone’s twisted their ankle on an afternoon hike. “And that’s just what happens, ninety percent of the time,” Lily says. Nevertheless, Lily is prepared twenty-four seven. She’s always on call.

Since 8th grade, Lily has been a member of the King County Search and Rescue Association. As one of many team leaders in the program, Lily is rigging– and avalanche– certified and is allowed to guide a group (usually less than 10 people) on a mission. The searches and rescues she has participated in have ranged from helping a man with a broken leg recover from an avalanche to chasing an Alzheimer’s patient around downtown Seattle.

“That was a really funny mission,” Lily says of the incident with the runaway Alzheimer’s patient. The man was wearing a locating bracelet, which transmitted a radio signal to Lily and her team, who had to trek around downtown with a huge wire-covered receiver.

When an incident occurs, a sheriff pages every member of the association. Every mission is optional, but enough people usually show up. High-schoolers comprise around 50% of the group that responds to calls, and they tend to get along well. “We’re pretty tight,” says Lily. “It’s fun.”

While it’s obvious that Lily enjoys the work she does and loves helping people (“That’s the main reason I got into it,” she says), she has to admit that “the most fun part is the adrenaline rush.” The rush of energy lasts for a while (Lily’s longest mission continued for 35 hours), but major exhaustion sets in afterwards. In Lily’s words, she gets “a sleep bomb.”

As a member of the association, Lily savors the moments when she can break away from reality, cancel all her afternoon plans, and head off to rescue someone. She especially remembers glancing at her watch one day when it was 2 pm. While her friends were sitting in sixth period, Lily was being hoisted into a helicopter. But every mission comes to an end in some way or another; the Alzheimer’s patient was found after he had hopped on a Metro and gotten off in Kirkland. “When you accomplish a mission,” she says, “It’s really satisfying.”