Ron Lavy

Jewish Sephardic/Mizrahi Hiloni Sabra Male 
in his 30s living in the Tel Aviv District.

I spent eight years in the IDF focused on special operational missions, but my Jewish mother insisted that I pursue a career in law, medicine or engineering. After law school, I sat down to study for my bar exam, but for two weeks I could not even bring myself to open the book. I told myself that if I couldn’t study, I should at least be able to write down a list of what I did want to do, and the first thing on that list was: search and rescue. 

I ended up passing the bar exam, but during my law internship I felt totally out of place in an office, grinding through paperwork late into the night. I soon quit and found myself volunteering on a farm, training an extremely violent and recalcitrant horse named Zoro. Day after day, I tried to tame Zoro, but every time I lost my cool, he gave me instant feedback not just by refusing cooperation, but by actively trying to kill me. I had so many close calls, but they were all in service of learning a crucial lesson: how to maintain your own composure to shape the outcomes of a totally dysregulated animal. In a way, Zoro actually trained me, and I couldn’t help but think of how useful this skill would serve in search and rescue scenarios. 

Still unsure of what to do in life, I created an informal network of friends living abroad who could be activated in case an Israeli were to go missing during their travels. In 2021, I received a call from the friends of Yanai Rimon, who disappeared on a river in the Chiapas highlands of Mexico. I told them that I would study the case and be here for them to assist, but they hired a different team that ultimately found his body several days later. A few months later, the parents got in touch with me wanting to understand how search and rescue actually works so they could help create a better system in the memory of their son. I told them that it is difficult to describe, as every case is different, and it is honestly more of an art that I don’t even fully understand myself despite executing hundreds of successful missions. 

I eventually took a job in venture capital, and while sitting in a conference room on the top of the tallest building in Tel Aviv, negotiating a deal with a big group of Swedes, Chinese and Israelis, my phone rang from a friend traveling abroad. “I’m in Laos and just pulled a body out of a river - I don’t know if he is alive or dead, but I do know that he is Israeli, as I met him briefly in a restaurant last night.” I excused myself from the meeting, and activated my network to begin what would be a nonstop, 24 hour mission. I also called a representative of Yanai Rimon's family and told him that if they wanted to see how a search and rescue operation works, they could shadow us. 

Within minutes, we brought top medical professionals on the line to guide my friend through triage and deliver the patient safely to the best medical facility, which was far below our minimum standard of care. We ascertained from bystanders that the patient had landed badly after recreationally jumping off a bridge into a river, and he suffered from extreme internal bleeding and potential brain damage. Against all odds, we arranged for immediate exfiltration to Thailand in an airplane ambulance with special cabin pressure controls needed for critical conditions like this, and ultimately saved his life and set him on a path to a full recovery. With Zoro’s training, I was able to manage a vast set of people while maintaining total focus and composure better than I ever had before. 

After this mission, Yanai Rimon’s family seeded the establishment of what has become Haverim Mehalzim, a global search and rescue team that has executed over 80 missions in 20 countries over the past few years, with a nearly perfect success rate safely returning Israelis home. Now, when I tell my mom the stories of our operations, she accepts that I did not pursue a career in law (though she is still proud that I passed the bar exam).