While a Dogue de Bordeaux might’ve been the star of the 1989 film “Turner & Hooch,” Deputy Gabriel Jasso and his Bloodhound, K-9 “Keva,” are the stars of their Department in San Bernardino County, California. Keva, nicknamed “The Fastest Nose in the West,” once located a stolen vehicle suspect in only one minute. Their track record, already quite impressive, has earned them the 2025 AKC Award for Canine Excellence in the Uniformed Service K-9 category.
Keva is three years old, and Deputy Jasso’s second K-9 Bloodhound that he’s worked with. The team, who live in Rancho Cucamonga, CA, has successfully found 47 missing persons, about 15 live finds a year since they started together over two and a half years ago.
Each year, the AKC Humane Fund awards dogs who do extraordinary things in the service of humankind in different categories: Service Dog, Therapy Dogs, Exemplary Companions, Search and Rescue (SAR) Dogs in Human Remains Detections and Disaster Response, Teams, and Uniformed Service K-9s, like Keva. Dogs in this category are full-time working K-9s in the realms of city, county, state, or federal law enforcement, the military, firefighting, customs and border patrol, or emergency services.
A Dream Coming Full Circle
Deputy Jasso knew from a young age that he wanted to go into law enforcement, specifically working in a K-9 unit. “It was my childhood dream to work with dogs. It’s always been my goal,” Deputy Jasso says. So when the opportunity opened up, he did everything he could to make it happen. They trained on Wednesdays, so he purposely stayed over the weekends on graveyard shifts, so he would be available on Wednesdays to train.
His work paid off: in 2016, he joined the K-9 unit. “My two older brothers refer to me and Keva as ‘Turner & Hooch,'” he laughs. “I get to go to work with my best friend.”
Growing up, Deputy Jasso had a Beagle and then Rottweilers. “I’ve had dogs my whole life. I can remember maybe six months of my life where I didn’t have a dog.” After college, he had Bulldogs. His first introduction to having a hound was “Singe,” his first police Bloodhound. Luckily, it wasn’t too much of a transition for him. “As far as stubbornness goes, hounds are definitely up there with Bulldogs,” he says. He still has Singe, who is now 8 years old, along with a 10-year-old Bulldog, “Lola,” and “Dottie,” a Labrador Retriever puppy. “Four dogs, three kids … it’s never boring,” he laughs.
Building Trust Together
Even now, on his second live find K-9, Deputy Jasso says it’s hard getting used to just how powerful their noses are. “It’s hard because we think we’re smarter than dogs,” he says. He has a sticker above the door that reads “Trust Your Dog” to remind him that she’s doing her job; if she messes up, it’s his fault, not hers. “I try to get used to it, but there’s always that doubt … and then she proves me wrong.”
They trained together at a canine handler school, where Keva and all of the other dogs present were about 8–10 months old. Deputy Jasso jokes that they definitely went through her puppy phase together. “I think in Keva’s first year, we went through nine or 10 beds,” he laughs. “But it was great in that aspect because we were able to build that bond with the dog, that relationship.”
Keva and Deputy Jasso’s relationship is largely built on trust between them. When they’re trailing together, he’s entirely focused on her. Keva is completely tuned into the scent, and he is watching her every move, watching for her cues. Other members of the team alert him to any obstacles. “I have a team with me because I only focus on what the dog is telling me. It’s not uncommon for me to walk into things,” he laughs. “I’m already kind of a klutz.”
Their first deployment was a dementia walkaway, who’d been missing for about 18 hours when they found him. Keva started pacing back and forth, and Deputy Jasso wasn’t sure what to make of it — but she found him. “I didn’t really know all of her nuances yet. It was my first week and a half of having her,” he recalls. “It was very eye-opening to see this puppy just doing what she was bred to do, using her instincts.”
Keva’s Nose Knows Best
Keva is mainly a live-find dog, and her main deployments include things like dementia walkaways, lost children, or suspects who take off running. In one instance, they were tracking an inmate who’d jumped over a fence. “It was the first time I realized, ‘Okay, she knows what she’s doing,'” he says. “He’d left some clothes, and it was about a two-mile deployment. With that, she had the scent.” Once they found the inmate’s jacket, they heard rustling in the bushes within another 10–15 feet, and there the inmate was.
Another incident close to Deputy Jasso’s heart was when a 2-year-old went missing in Rancho Cucamonga in the middle of the night. The child managed to open the garage door and get out. Keva caught the scent and led them to an apartment complex nearby, pacing back and forth. There was a pedestrian gate nearby that led out to a large park, and everyone began to worry as coyotes howled in the distance. They brought Keva back and redeployed her. Still, she returned to the same spot, pacing.
They deployed a second search-and-rescue dog, who brought them back to the same spot Keva had led them to. A resident came out, and the unit told them they were looking for a child. “The resident said they just found a child sleeping in their garage. He had left it open maybe 6–8 inches, and she was able to crawl under the garage,” Deputy Jasso recalls. “We were inches from her; there was just a wall between us. The dogs were telling us she was there the whole time, but we couldn’t interpret what they were telling us.”
Jasso’s ‘Police Dog’
When Keva’s on duty, she’s in work mode. The days when Deputy Jasso and Keva are working, usually on shifts that start at 3 or 1 a.m., Keva knows the drill. “We’re pretty regimented on her work days. My wife usually lets her out in the morning so that I can sleep,” he says. Their dogs have a kennel inside their garage that leads out into the backyard through a doggy door. She usually stays in the garage resting until it’s time for them to get to work.
They still train very often, almost every day, to keep her skills sharp. On her off days, she gets to lounge around and “be a dog” in every sense of the word. But after her reign of bedding terror as a puppy, there are limitations. “As she’s gotten older, she’s a little less destructive,” he says. “But she’s still not allowed to have any kind of plushies, because they end up in 12 million pieces,” he laughs.
As for his kids, they love Keva. “They refer to her as ‘my police dog,’ they don’t even refer to her by her name,” he laughs. “My son thinks I’m like ‘PAW Patrol,’ running around, saving the world.”
Along with being a great family pet and an incredible working dog, Deputy Jasso says there’s peace of mind knowing what Keva is capable of. “I’m the crazy guy now at home and have jars with everybody’s scent,” he says. “So if they ever go missing, Keva and I will find them.”
Recognizing a Life-Saving Team
Having now worked together for almost three years, and Keva being his second K-9 Bloodhound, Deputy Jasso says he’s still impressed by what she can do. “I still get amazed sometimes by how she does it, how scent works,” he says. “Obviously, it’s in their nature and what they’re bred to do, but it’s amazing that they can get from point A to point B, just based on something somebody touched.”
For them, winning the Award for Canine Excellence is something that they never dreamed of. “It’s validation of the hard work and the dedication that we put into it. It’s really cool to see our hard work being recognized,” he says.
For Deputy Jasso, the job is incredibly emotional, and his empathy for those lost and their families can make deployment incredibly stressful. “I take it very seriously. It’s a scary situation when we deploy,” he says. “Every time, it’s often a life-or-death situation.”
He thinks back to dementia cases and the missing children they’ve found. In extreme weather conditions like summer or winter, time is even more of the essence, as things like dehydration kick in more easily. Those lost are often unable to care for themselves, and so each time they deploy, he recognizes that they need to work quickly and efficiently as a team.
“When we found that little girl, it was like holding my daughter,” he says. “That was somebody’s kid. How would I feel if my kid were missing? How would I feel if my parent were missing?”
Listening to Keva and tuning in to her intricacies is always a learning experience, but as Deputy Jasso’s sign says, “Trust Your Dog.” Their incredible noses will often lead them to exactly what they’re looking for.