A Buckhannon police officer received the Rotary Club of Buckhannon-Upshur’s Spirit of Service award on April 7, recognizing his role in finding a missing 2-year-old girl during a search last summer.
Patrolman Cole Bender accepted the honor from Buckhannon Police Chief Matt Gregory at the Rotary Club’s meeting.
According to previous coverage, the search began on Monday, July 21, 2025, when the Upshur County Sheriff’s Office and the West Virginia State Police Buckhannon detachment called for help locating a nonverbal 2-year-old with autism who had wandered from her home. Bender was among several Buckhannon officers who responded.
About an hour after the initial request for help, Bender walked up a steep hillside roughly 100 yards from the home, considering what a child her age might do. As daylight faded, he spotted what he first took to be an animal near the top of the slope. It was the missing girl. Bender carried her to safety just before dark.
At the April 7 Rotary meeting, Gregory read the following statement honoring Bender’s service:
Statement read by Matt Gregory
It is my privilege and an honor to be here for tonight’s event. Cole Bender came to the Buckhannon Police Department with six years of law enforcement service, the first five with the Upshur County Sheriff’s Office. He came to us about this time last year, and he has been with us for a year now. It was a wonderful addition to the Buckhannon Police Department; we’re just tickled to have him as part of our family.
Cole is a very good officer, focusing on investigations and various outreach efforts. Cole is actively working with our task force now on several felony drug investigations, and has also recently undergone CIT, or crisis intervention team training, which focuses on de-escalating individuals who are in crisis. This was an intensive 40-hour class that was hosted at the Buckhannon Police Department back in February, and Cole successfully completed that. He now wears the pin on his uniform, and you’ll see it affixed tonight.
The other pin on his uniform is what brings us here tonight for the Spirit of Service award, which is the lifesaving award that Cole was honored with last fall for his efforts in saving the life of a young female toddler. Last summer, Cole was called upon to assist in search-and-rescue efforts in the county for a missing toddler. She’d been missing for several hours, and the fear was, as it was getting dark and she hadn’t been found yet, that she was in great danger.
Cole, through his intuition, was able to search a new area that hadn’t yet been searched by the teams who were present. Due to this intuition and quick thinking, he was able to rescue this toddler just prior to it getting dark, saving her life. For those efforts, Cole was awarded the Buckhannon Police Department’s lifesaving award, and again, that’s what brings us here tonight.
