Living with strong scents of duty

NEWPORT BEACH — The embossed paw-print design above the doorbell at Larry Harris’ house is the first tip-off that he is unquestionably a dog person.

The photos and paintings of dogs and dog-related awards on nearly every wall in the house are a clue to Harris’ longtime volunteer career as a bloodhound trainer for law enforcement.

But about three weeks ago, after 21 years on a job that remains controversial, Harris put away the harness and leash for good when his dog Trace died.

Trace was Harris’ fifth — and final — bloodhound. He’s had a varied career — a veteran of the Air Force, engineer for McDonnell Douglas, Newport Beach reserve police officer — but his work with bloodhounds has been a constant since he got his first dog in 1986, when he was a volunteer reserve deputy with the O.C. Sheriff’s Department.

He had grown up around the hunting dogs his father and grandfather kept but didn’t know much about bloodhounds.

When his field sergeant asked if he wanted to help develop a bloodhound program, Harris said, “I just thought it’d be kind of neat. With a bloodhound you get to find lost children, senile adults and chase bad guys all year round. With a hunting dog you only get to do it a few times a year.”

In his years as a volunteer dog handler with the Sheriff’s Department and the Irvine Police Department, Harris worked as far away as Susanville, which is north of Sacramento and Yosemite; and he had cases as close as his own street, where he and his dog helped look for two neighbors with Alzheimer’s disease who wandered from home on different occasions.

His dogs worked the 1993 Laguna Beach fire. Once, they trailed a robbery suspect about 10 miles, from a bank in Palm Desert to a house in Indio. A picture on Harris’ wall shows Sable and Duchess, Harris’ first and second working dogs, next to two trash bags of children’s body parts they’d sniffed out — evidence in a case that was gruesome but was solved in part because of the dogs.

One of Harris’ favorite cases was in Santa Ana, where a 3-year-old girl was snatched while playing in front of a laundry facility where her aunt was doing the wash.

Harris had Sable smell one of the girl’s sweaters. The dog led him to the very back of an apartment complex, right to the door. Then police took over.

“They emptied out the house and there were a number of people in there, but this little girl was in the house,” Harris said. “It turned out one of the suspects’ brothers was already in jail for kidnapping children and selling them in Mexico, so that was probably her destiny.”

One big obstacle to using scent evidence is that dogs sometimes aren’t called to the scene until hours after a crime is discovered. The scents become fainter, and the scene gets contaminated by the many officers working the case.

Harris and his New York business partner and mentor, Bill Tolhurst, who died in 2005, tried to overcome that obstacle with a device that captures human scents for later use.

The Scent Transfer Unit looks like a toolbox and works like a vacuum. Inside the box a suction device is fitted with a sterile gauze pad. Place the device close to whatever may have human scent on it, turn on the suction, and it traps the scent, which can be sealed in a bag and saved for later, Harris said.

About 200 units have been sold in the United States, and the FBI has 82 of them, Harris said. But he doesn’t think every unit sold is in use today, and that may be a reflection of the dispute over how much dogs can really do and how useful it is in fighting crime.

Harris seems in awe and also proud of the nearly limitless capabilities he believes bloodhounds possess.

He described a test he conducted with the FBI in which a car was blown up. A dog identified who had handled the explosive after smelling the scent lifted from a burnt bomb fragment the size of a quarter.

But to some law enforcement and dog handlers’ groups, such claims are too amazing to be true. After several convictions based on dogs’ evidence were reportedly thrown out, groups such as the Law Enforcement Bloodhound Assn. have questioned the accuracy of the Scent Transfer Unit and Harris’ methods with dogs.

To Larry Montgomery, an investigator for the Orange County District Attorney who worked with Harris at the Irvine Police Department, the questioners should realize evidence from dogs is a tool that’s most useful when it’s supported by other police work.

“It’s not something that you can rely on absolutely, positively as positive evidence all by itself,” Montgomery said. “But with cooperation, it’s valuable. It gives you leads to follow up on that you may not have had otherwise.”

Montgomery said it was devastating for Harris, a volunteer who cared deeply about his work, when some people doubted his results.

“He’s very conscientious; he works very hard to do what’s right,” Montgomery said. “He’s a guy you could trust with your life.”

Harris agreed that dogs are a useful tool but shouldn’t be the sole authority in a case, and he added, “I don’t think agencies like the FBI would stick with us if we were a bunch of wackos.”

Harris retired from the Irvine Police Department reserves in 2005, but he has continued to work on dog training and research.

“It’s always been a labor of love. The hardest part now is not doing it anymore,” said Harris, who turned 79 on Oct. 13. “I’m too old to be chasing after these dogs in the middle of the night.”

With no bloodhounds around, Harris and his wife, Jean, will no longer have to get ready for evenings out by dressing in the garage so their clothes don’t get slobbered on. But even if bloodhounds are now too much work, the couple doesn’t intend to remain dog-less.

And Harris isn’t giving up public service, either. He and Jean are shopping for a smaller dog, which they intend to train as a therapy dog that will visit hospitals, retirement homes, and the like.

“I couldn’t be happy with a dog unless I was training it to do something,” Harris said.

ALICIA ROBINSON may be reached at (714) 966-4626 or at alicia.robinson@latimes.com.