A Montana hotel owner has donated funds for two new thermal imaging drones to Paws Patrol LV, replacing the $7,000 device that was destroyed last month during a nighttime search for an injured dog in the Las Vegas Wash.

The Las Vegas animal search and rescue nonprofit’s damaged drone is also expected to be repaired, reports the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Pam Stallings, owner of the Crosswinds Inn in West Yellowstone, Montana, made the donation after learning about the group’s loss through her daughter-in-law, who has vacationed in Boulder City and follows Paws Patrol on social media. Stallings lives more than 700 miles from Las Vegas and had no prior connection to the organization.

“The people are volunteers. They need all the help they can get,” Stallings said. “So, if I can help them to make it a little bit easier, that’s the objective.”

We first reported on the drone’s destruction in July, when volunteers were searching for a dog that had been struck by a vehicle and limped into thick brush along the wash.

We later covered new details showing that people living in the wash mistook the drone operator for surveillance, threw a rock at the device, and destroyed it after knocking it into the water.

The injured dog was never located despite days of follow-up searches. Paws Patrol volunteer Kelly Winder said the group put its heart into that search and felt its loss deeply when the mission failed.

“We do this day and night,” Winder said. “We put our hearts and soul into this, and when we cannot accomplish what we set out to do, which is to save a life, that hurts a lot.”

The thermal drone had been one of Paws Patrol’s most valuable tools, helping locate lost, abandoned, and injured animals in washes, the desert, and other areas where they are difficult to spot on foot.

Losing it left the all-volunteer group with a significant gap in its search capability heading into the hottest weeks of the Las Vegas summer.

Winder said the response from Stallings and other supporters after the group’s public appeal helped restore his faith in people after the drone was destroyed.

He called Stallings and others who stepped up “angels” who recognize the effort volunteers put into animal rescue.

Paws Patrol LV is a volunteer nonprofit that responds to reports of lost, abandoned, and injured dogs across the Las Vegas Valley and surrounding desert.

With two new drones on the way and the damaged unit set for repair, the group will soon have more search capacity than it did before the July incident.