SEQUIM — “I work by myself,” Kristine Fairbanks told the Peninsula Daily News just over a year ago.
“I don’t have backup.”
Actually, Fairbanks worked with a partner — a seven-year-old German shepherd named Radar, the third K-9 animal she had teamed with in her 15 years with the U.S. Forest Service.
Radar was found unharmed in Fairbanks’ vehicle when a Clallam County deputy discovered her body at the Dungeness Forks campground off Palo Alto Road south of Sequim.
Fairbanks was a regular subject in the PDN, often for her investigations of timber thefts or salal “turf wars” in the 300,000 acres of national forest she patrolled in the Olympic Mountains.
An old-growth cedar could bring as much as $100,000 to a thief — often to bankroll drugs — and salal is valued by florists for flower arrangements.
Ferns, mushrooms, moss, cedar bark and grass also are prized — and poached.
