After spending more than a decade in the Army, both in active duty and the National Guard, Oregon native Nick Rinn chose a unique career path most people wouldn’t even consider.
He became an underwater rescue diver recovering bodies.
Rinn, who grew up in North Bend, Oregon, served two years in the Army on active duty, then another nine years in the Army National Guard in Bend. In 2002, he provided security for the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
From an early age, Rinn’s carried a deep passion for underwater recovery. In 1987, at age 13, Rinn became a certified scuba diver. After his time in the military, Rinn developed the Oregon Rescue Divers, a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization deployed to various underwater recovery missions.
The Army veteran has traveled across the country, assisting with several search and recovery teams to find missing people and vehicles. Rinn, along with a team of four volunteer divers, specialize in underwater criminal investigation, along with search, rescue and recovery work.
While the job can be extremely rewarding, body recovery in emergency situations can also be emotionally draining for Finn and his crew.
“Are there certain things that we do that a lot of people probably wouldn’t want to do? And they shouldn’t have to,” Rinn told Central Oregon Daily. “Body recovery is a unique form of using your scuba diving skills and it’s definitely not for everybody.
“What keeps me able to continue to focus on that is that I tell myself, you know, I have to see that, so others don’t have to.”
Olympic Security Chance of a Lifetime
Rinn has always loved Central Oregon and decided to plant roots there after leaving the Army. Following graduation from Mountain View High School in 1992, he chose the Army with aspirations to be a construction equipment operator.
Rinn completed basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, followed by advanced schooling with the Army Corps of Engineers. For two years, he was stationed in Fort Stewart, Georgia.
“It was a good experience,” Rinn said. “You got paid to train and work and kind of get dirty and blow stuff up, you know? It was kind of a fun time.”
In 1996, he left active duty and returned to Bend. But Rinn wasn’t finished with military service. He walked into the Bend Armory and joined the 1249th Engineer Battalion. He spent nine years in the National Guard serving in the same unit.
“During that time, I had the honor to volunteer to go do security at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah,” Rinn said. “That was pretty close to right after 9/11 and so the world was on alert, especially our country. High security.”
Rinn’s unit conducted perimeter security around Seven Peaks Arena, which hosted women’s hockey events, for about two weeks before the Olympics. After the Games began, the unit switched to gate entrance duty, working the magnetometers, checking people as they entered the arena.
“All the spectators and everybody that comes into the event, we were basically there to run them through just like airport security, make sure nobody got in with any weapons or anything that could harm anybody inside there,” Rinn said.
Working at the Olympics was a rare opportunity he couldn’t pass up.
“You think about it, how often do they have Olympic Games here in the United States, let alone that close to your hometown?” he said.
Rinn ended his military career in 2004 after sustaining a back injury on duty.
Diving to Recover Bodies
Most people assume, based on what Rinn does now, that he was an ace scuba diver in the Army. That was not the case. While he became certified as a young teenager, he really didn’t pursue it as a career until years later.
“I didn’t know anybody that was a scuba diver, so I didn’t really get to do it until, one year as an electrician, I had an apprentice that was assigned to me and he had recently gotten certified, had all his own gear,” Rinn said. “He took me out to Cultus Lake (in Central Oregon) and then I started getting into it a little bit more.”
But Rinn felt that to fully commit to scuba diving and rescue missions, he needed more education and training. He took Advanced Open Water and Rescue Diver courses, becoming a scuba instructor, which opened the door to underwater criminal investigation.
“That took lots of different training and lots of experiences of traveling around the United States,” he said.
After a while, Rinn decided to stick closer to home, founding Oregon Rescue Divers in Bend. The divers help law enforcement agencies, fire and rescue squads and local municipalities in “anything aquatic emergency related.”
What’s the most difficult part of finding and recovering bodies from the water? Having to face families who lost loved ones.
“That’s tougher than anything you’re going to find out there, because you got to remember, even though you don’t know this person, it’s somebody’s person,” Rinn said. “And then you finally do find the person, and they say thank you for sticking it out while nobody else was here to do that. I think that’s what hits home, and that’s what makes me feel really good about what we do as a team and being there for the families from the start to the finish is, is huge for them.”
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