Megan Navarro
DRIPPING SPRINGS — At 19 years old, Jennifer Neill got a crash course in removing sheetrock and flooring to salvage what she could during the 1998 flood in San Marcos, where she had four-and-a-half-feet of water swarm into her house from the Blanco River. After facing her fear of floodwaters, she started Hill Country Rescue & Recovery to aid the community.
She channeled her anxiety from the flood to volunteer to help whoever she could, loading up on supplies and driving into disaster areas across Texas for the last 20 years, including hurricanes Harvey, Katrina and Rita. The most recent was the July 4, 2025, weekend; she was in Santa Fe, New Mexico, but when she drove back to Texas, the feeling to help was overwhelming.
“My anxiety, as we were driving back, was just going up and up. The closer we got to Texas, I was like, ‘I have to do something. I have to figure out where to go, what to do,’” Neill recalled.
She ended up connecting with a group to assist in Comfort, as that was a quick place to plug in and then, later, helped in Liberty Hill. Though everyone wanted to help in Sandy Creek, they weren’t able to until at least a week later because the sole focus was search and rescue.
“I drove back and forth every day. It’s an hour from my house in Dripping Springs, but I went down every day for a solid week and then, started doing volunteer groups for debris cleanup, networking with other groups here in town and wherever to take volunteers down to do debris cleanup,” she said. “We did that every weekend for ... three months.”
In her personal history with natural disasters and rescues, along with her professional experience as a trauma therapist, a desire to help others in times of need and knowing what it’s like to lose a loved one, Neill started Hill Country Rescue & Recovery. The 501(c)(3) is committed to serving the community with compassion in times of crisis, offering support and resources that restore hope.
Though a component of that is assisting in disaster relief, another is rescuing dogs.
The idea sparked in February of this year, when Neill saw a Facebook post for Heidi, a 16-year-old dog missing in Dripping Springs. Never having met the dog or her family, Neill worked to make signs and flyers to display throughout the area, feeling that someone had seen Heidi. She also shared resources with the family, including a local pet tracking option with access to thermal drones.
However, it took several days to connect with them.
“It took the Austin groups several days to come out to send a drone and that's really all they did,” Neill recalled. “They really didn't help with much else because we never had any sightings of her, but I made signs for them, I put out flyers on people's doors and mailboxes and we just tried to get the word out. We never found that dog.”
She thought that if she had a thermal drone herself, they could have found the dog: “I thought to myself, ‘Okay, I'm just gonna buy a thermal drone.’ I realized I had to get a Part 107 certification to fly commercially. And I was like, ‘I don't need to spend $10,000 on a drone to find the occasional lost dog.’”
But, Neill continued, when the floods hit July 4 weekend, with all of the missing people, a thermal drone could have helped with that, as well. So, she decided to include both disasters and dogs into her work at Hill Country Rescue & Recovery.
“It’s all just kind of coming together and it’s neat to be able to bring those two ideas together. As random as they kind of sound, it's the same energy that drives both of them. Luckily, disasters don't happen every day and, luckily, dogs don't get lost every day,” she said. “We're able to kind of juggle both of those things at the same time.”
When there is a disaster to respond to, Neill explained that resources and help are not based on requests, as she and volunteers will show up where they can.
However, for the lost dogs component, people will need to fill out a short request form on the organization’s website — to ensure the correct information is put on the flyer — and they only serve Dripping Springs and close surrounding areas. There is also a stipulation that they will only help owned dogs, not strays, Neill said.
“People need to utilize those systems that are in place for that. The idea with what I'm doing is if I can find lost owned pets, then we keep animals off the streets and hopefully minimize the number of strays that are found,” she said.
In order to keep the effort going, volunteers are needed for both disaster relief and lost dog searches.
“We love vet techs. We love people that have had their own lost dogs, that feel passionate about finding other people's dogs because they've learned a little bit about the process through that,” Neill said. “I always tell the people that I help, ‘You're really good at doing this now. So, if you want to come volunteer, you know all the things that I know now.’”
One important rule that is close to Neill’s heart is, no matter what, to not charge anyone for the help that Hill Country Rescue & Recovery gives: “ We are donations only and sponsorships only and that's the way it'll be. If it ever gets to the point where that doesn't work, then we won't do it anymore.”
To learn more about Hill Country Rescue & Recovery and find where to receive or provide help, visit www.hillcountryrescuerecovery.org.
