Emergency prep 2026: CMC gives first responders equipment they can count on
For first responders to effectively carry out emergency saves for people who need it, they need to know that the gear they are using is not only reliable, but also of the highest quality.
That’s been the goal of CMC Rescue since it was founded in Goleta in 1978 and nearly 50 years later, many of its biggest customers continue coming back for that reason.
“The customer base we have, they’re very engaged and passionate about what they do, and that makes my job so much easier,” Jason Lusk, CMC’s vice president of business development and product strategy, told the Business Times.
CMC Rescue offers safety equipment for rescue and rope access, such as harnesses, anchors, belts, gloves, carabiners, plates and so much more. As such, CMC has two markets — people who do work on rope, like civil engineers, as well as first responders who use the gear to save people in compromised positions.
These first responders include working with local groups like the various fire departments across the Central Coast.
“We design and make equipment that essentially helps first responders save other people’s lives that are in a compromised position, usually in a vertical environment, whether that be over the edge of a cliff or in a confined space in an industrial setting,” Lusk said.
“Without the equipment, they are unable to affect a rescue in these environments safely,” Lusk said. “My goal on the product side is to deliver customers safer and more efficient gear in order to affect a rescue.”
Having worked at CMC for the last 14 years, Lusk said mostly everybody he is in contact with is passionate about the work they do in saving people. That, in turn, is what helps him stay passionate on the product development side of the company.
“It’s the big reason why I’m still here,” he said. “The passionate customers, they are infectious. This is a super niche world that we’re in, but it’s our world. We all love it.”
Jason Copus, a volunteer for Santa Barbara County Search and Rescue, told the Business Times that the goal of the organization is to respond to emergencies, ranging from people lost in the wilderness to snake bites to being stuck in compromised positions.
SAR has had a close relationship with CMC and its founder, Jim Frank, and has been using the company’s equipment for decades. Copus noted that with search and rescue, “you have to take the equipment to a whole new level and ensure that it is tried and true.”
“When you’re doing a high-angle rescue, the equipment has to support not just the person doing the save, but the patient as well,” he said. “We wouldn’t be using CMC if we didn’t trust it. They produce a high-level, high-quality set of gear that we have used time and time again.”
In regard to improving that gear, Lusk said that making the gear as light as possible is imperative for search and rescue teams, who are usually on the move.
“They want to have as few parts as possible to do the job that they do so efficiency is important,” Lusk said. “So having one device that can do multiple things is preferred, but it has to be safe and so that is all we are doing at CMC, delivering products that are safer and more efficient.”
Lusk said getting customer feedback is one of the easier parts of the job. He pointed to the company’s many local connections — such as with Montecito Fire or Santa Barbara County Fire — and being able to ask directly what needs to be improved.
“We’re just constantly getting that input and listening, and we are seeing the industry moving in a direction of smaller, lighter, faster, safer, and those are the products we are focusing our design efforts on,” he said.
In addition to providing the gear, CMC also has a school component of sorts where they hold several classes throughout the country teaching people how to effectively use the gear. CMC Rescue School was founded four years after the company.
One of the teachers is Jason McElmury, a man who spent 40-plus years in technical rescue, starting out as a volunteer firefighter in Wisconsin before eventually retiring as the fire chief of Pleasant Prairie Fire Rescue in 2017 after 28 years of service.
McElmury said right before his retirement, he ran into CMC’s founder at a symposium and joked that if he “needed an instructor to let him know.”
“I was fully joking, but he took me seriously and the rest is history,” McElmury said with a laugh.
He noted that the CMC Rescue School is imperative for teaching “ people how to properly use the equipment.”
“There’s more to it than just reading the instructions with these products and without the proper training, both their lives and the people they are saving are put at risk,” McElmury said.
He added that the school also allows students to have input on product design, allowing them to test portal-type products and really improve them for the betterment of everyone.
Teaching is nothing new for McElmury; he has been doing it since 1984 at his local technical college, but it is something that still brings him great joy. In 2024 alone, the school taught over 2,700 people through 175 different classes. The classes’ length depends on the subject matter.
“This work is unbelievably rewarding,” McElmury said. “There’s no greater feeling for an instructor than when people are asking questions and fully engaged in what you’re teaching them, and so I consider myself very blessed to be able to do this. I’m retired. I do this because I want to, not because I have to.”
CMC Rescue is also an ESOP, or Employee Stock Ownership Plan, which is a type of employee benefit and retirement plan that gives workers ownership interest in the company in the form of shares of stock. Lusk said that since the company transitioned to one in the 2010s, it has only boosted morale and buy-in from the workers who want to improve the company.
“Jim Frank (the founder) could have easily sold it to much larger companies that were sniffing around and interested in the brand, but he didn’t like the prospect of CMC’s future in their hands, so he decided to change the structure of the company to an ESOP and it’s a good motivator for all of us as employees,” Lusk said. “Our job is to make sure people understand that they have skin in the game and what that scheme in the game looks like, and it seems to resonate with people.”
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