The call for help came into the U.S. Coast Guard's North Highlands air station at 3 p.m. Thursday. Auxiliarist Ron Clark watched as seven of his friends launched into action.
"They were all business," he said. "The pilots were plotting (courses), figuring flight times. They moved fast. You couldn't keep them from that plane."
Five hours later, a second call came.
The crew's massive C-130 Hercules had collided with a Marine helicopter and gone down near San Clemente Island.
Cmdr. Todd Lightle, himself a C-130 pilot, described the reaction at McClellan Field: "Sorrow. Disbelief."
Standing on the tarmac Friday afternoon, still with no word on his comrades' fate, Lightle talked about the special character of his branch of the military – one of the smallest of the armed forces.
"When an event of this magnitude hits our service," he said, "we feel it very deep in our hearts."
Lightle declined to talk specifically about the crew of the downed plane. By Friday night, officials had not released their names.
Officials described the 200-person station as a close-knit community.
"We're a family," Petty Officer Alan Haraf said.
The job requires it. Crews often work 24-hour shifts, eating and bunking at the station.
Thursday's ill-fated mission was the third Pacific search-and-rescue mission in two days for Sacramento crews.
The day before, a crew had flown cover for a medevac rescue from a ship off the coast of Mexico.
Later, a crew provided air support for the rescue of five people from a sinking sailboat, also in the Pacific off Mexico.
Last week, the same plane ferried to McClellan hundreds of sick sea birds that had washed ashore in Oregon, affected by a mysterious algae bloom. The Coast Guard transferred the birds to a wildlife rescue center in Fairfield.
The Sacramento station recently ran relief missions delivering materials from Hawaii to Samoa after a tsunami hit, officials said.
"We go anywhere required," Sacramento spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Sean Green said.
The Coast Guard motto is "Semper paratus" – "Always ready" – and the Sacramento station's territory stretches from the Canadian border to the Galápagos Islands of Ecuador and halfway to Hawaii. The large fuel capacity of the station's C-130 Hercules allows crews to conduct extended searches or emergency operations.
Chris Kendall, a retired C-130 pilot who flew for the Coast Guard in Sacramento from 2000 to 2004, said the work is gratifying, yet hard – especially the long-distance, late-night searches.
"It is a demanding environment," he said.
Still, news of the crash came as a shock.
"The Coast Guard has such a good safety record in the C-130 community," Kendall said.
Night searches are not unusual. Planes use infrared radar and infrared cameras. The pilot and co-pilot will often help scan the water for the subjects of the search, as well as charting the plane's course.
Friday night, off the coast near San Diego, Coast Guard crews were doing just that, searching for their own.
Call The Bee's Tony Bizjak, (916) 321-1059.
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