Adventures with Purpose: Volunteer dive team solves nearly 25 missing-person cold cases — and counting

Volunteer dive team use underwater skills to find missing people

Doug Bishop of "Adventures With Purpose" talks with FOX Television Stations about the team's effort in finding missing people believed to be underwater.

BEND, Ore. - Ethan Kazmerzak. Carey Mae Parker. Tammy Goff. The names may not ring a bell for many people.

But for Doug Bishop, their pictures and their families will forever remain etched in his memory.

Bishop, 38, is the lead diver and investigator with Adventures with Purpose — a group of volunteer divers who travel across the country and look for clues underwater in hopes of cracking missing persons’ cold cases.

Using sonar equipment, the Bend, Oregon-based group said they have solved 22 cases since formally launching two years ago.

The 10-member group not only consists of divers but also production crewmembers who film every search and rescue, posting videos on YouTube and other social media pages.

Their services are also free for law enforcement and families. The team is funded with donations.

From environmentalists to search-and-rescuers

Bishop said Adventures with Purpose actually started out as an environmentalist group. The founder, Jared Leisek, was into diving and cleaning up waterways to help clean the environment.

"His efforts led to a vehicle being discovered underwater here in the city of Portland, Oregon," Bishop told FOX Television Stations. "Then he started focusing on just pulling vehicles out."

Leisek then paired up with Bishop, who owned a towing company, to start pulling vehicles from the water for environmental purposes. They also used sonar equipment.

But one of the vehicles they pulled out contained human remains. When word got out, people started calling the pair, believing their missing loved ones may, too, be underwater.

One of their first tragic finds was the body of Ethan Kazmerzak in 2020. His mother found out about the duo and asked them if they could help find her 22-year-old son who had gone missing sometime in September 2013.

The mother directed the men to an Iowa pond.

"We ended up going out there and working off her hunch of where she felt her son might be ... we ended up finding her son," Bishop said.

The men documented their find and then the requests from other families of missing people started pouring in.

"Little did we know it ... we’re working in a gray area that’s not really being done," Bishop continued.

How the group interact with police

Bishop said many people assume that officers are sending divers out to search for missing people underwater but said that’s mostly not the case.

He said the use and understanding of sonar equipment are what separate the group from law enforcement. Bishop said sonar equipment can reveal what’s underwater that human eyes cannot see because it’s too dark.

"There’s no school, really that exists, that teaches sonar," Bishop said, adding that he and the team have had to learn the equipment as they go on missions.

Bishop said many police departments may have sonar equipment but may not understand all the technicalities that go along with it.

"I’ve had a lot of agencies reach out to me for help," he added.

For instance, Bishop said many agencies searched the same waters for Jed Hall. Bishop and the team were able to find his vehicle in Snake River in Idaho.

According to EastIdahoNews.com, the 16-year-old went missing in 2018. Human remains were found in the car and are currently being identified.

NamUS: 600K people go missing every year in the US

According to National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), a branch of the U.S. Justice Department, 600,000 people go missing every year in the U.S.

Currently, there are no well-known databases that estimate how many of the missing people are believed to be underwater.

However, Bishop said he believes a huge fraction of missing people is deep down in the country’s waterways.

"There’s a lot of people that are missing, underwater in America," Bishop said. "I would estimate probably several thousand people."

"It happens all the time," he continued. "Whether it’s an accident, whether it’s a suicide, murder."

Bishop said many of the cases the team has solved are accidents, but some of the finds are tied to criminal cases.

Bishop added that he and Leisek didn’t set out to become a well-known search-and-rescue team.

"We have developed a set of skills that have led us in this direction," he said.

"I guess there is something there that’s extra in the universe that has guided us together on this journey to help mend families," he added. "We’re just good guys trying to do good in the world."

This story was reported from Los Angeles.