Local nonprofit, Team Texas K9s, headed to Alaska to continue search for the Maynard family

WACO, Texas (KWTX) - Nearly five months ago a Troy family tragically went missing after their boat capsized off the coast of Homer, Alaska on August 3rd.

Despite the best efforts of the U.S. Coast Guard and Alaska DPS to find David, Mary, Colton, and Brantley Maynard they were never found.

However, Team Texas K9s, a local nonprofit that goes all over the country to help search for missing, lost, or injured people, are now planning to continue the search for the Maynards.

Allen Fields, who runs Team Texas K9s with his wife, says they’ve searched for and helped find many people over the years, but when they heard about what happened to the Maynard family it hit close to home.

“We live there in Troy, so our grandson went to school with Colton,” Fields shared.

After the family’s boat capsized the U.S. Coast Guard immediately began searching for them and the boat, making the difficult decision to suspend the search after nearly 24 hours.

Alaska DPS took over soon after, later suspending their search as well. After hearing about this, Fields says their team made the decision to go there themselves.

“We decided we’re just gonna go up and put our skills to work and see if we can’t at least locate them and bring them home for the family,” he explained.

Their goal is to travel to Homer, Alaska in July, which according to Fields is when the weather should be best for an underwater search.

“There’s a lot of logistics that gotta happen and getting with resources up there,” he said, “there’s still concerns with the weather and the rough waters, and we’ll just have to kind of deal with it when we get there.”

As for how they plan to find them, Fields explained that they have multiple resources that they’ll be taking with them on their search.

“Well of course we have the cadaver dogs that can smell cadaver underwater no matter how deep it is, as long as it’s hitting the surface they’ll tell us where it’s at,” he said.

They also have a special sonar device called the AquaEye, “which is a device that uses algorithms to detect human remains underwater,” he explained.

And of course their underwater drone that can go over 300 feet down and includes a 4K camera, lights, and an arm.

“Once we kind of pinpoint it down we can do down and kind of see what we can see,” Fields said.

Their plan is to stay as long as they can depending on weather conditions and their funds, but Fields says they just hope they can finally find the Maynards.

“It’s just to bring closure for the family, just when somebody’s missing it is not… it is no fun I mean to not know,” he shared.

If you would like to help by donating towards their search, click here.