This week, I was reminded of an incident I supported a few years ago.
A multi-month program had just finished, and the group leader was supposed to drive back to the program’s home base, drop off his vehicle, turn in his paperwork and equipment, and go home.
But, he never showed up.
I got a call in the middle of the night, and the staff were starting to get concerned. They weren’t sure just how worried they should be, but something just felt…off. The organization’s policy was to wait 24 hours before escalating, but this one felt different. It’s hard to describe in words, but there was just a gut feeling.
His phone was off, and the vehicle’s GPS tracker, which was supposed to be installed (courtesy of our insurance carrier), was never plugged in. We had no idea where he was.
I called his emergency contact, his father, to let him know the situation and to recruit his help. Perhaps he knew something we didn’t. Perhaps they had been in touch, or he knew of a friend or family in the area who might know more.
Equally concerned and in the dark, we agreed it was time to notify the police.
The police started their own investigation and dispatched the local sheriff to the campground where the group had ended their program, and local law enforcement to the nearest town. In the back of our minds was a recent national news story from the region about young people going missing. I really hoped our situation had nothing to do with that one.
Author’s note. Trigger warning: the next few paragraphs can be heavy
Eventually, after several interviews and chasing dead ends, the police obtained a search warrant to ping the leader’s cell phone. In the wee hours of the morning, the officer I was working with told me they found him in a hotel room. He was, as it was told to me, “physically okay, and we’re thankful we found him ‘just in time.’”
We found out some time later that the young man was struggling to re-enter “the real world” after his long program. Many readers might identify with the challenge of re-entry after weeks, even months, in the backcountry in small group settings. The vets from Iraq and Afghanistan I used to work with had similar stories and struggles when they returned home after long deployments. Purposefully adjourning and providing closure is perhaps another post for another time.
Thank god the staff decided to raise the alarm before the policy mandated it.
Most of the time, they’re just running late.
Situations where someone is unaccounted for happen all the time.
Sometimes, they “no-show” and just skip the day altogether. Other times, they get turned around or delayed, or there’s a miscommunication about a meeting place or time. But no matter what, there is a period of time before the outcome of the situation is known. There’s a period of time where you might stop and think, “I really hope so-and-so is okay.”
In fact, it’s so common in nearly all aspects of our lives that it’s easy for leaders to overlook the potential seriousness and possibility that the other person(s) are, actually, not okay.
I suspect many readers might think “yes, we know missing people are a big deal, and we have protocols in place for that.”
Good. But I have to be honest, I’ve been surprised at how many programs and organizations don’t have protocols in place. The ones that do have something written down often set a clock like that 24 hours, which is a long time to sit on a bad feeling. I’m continually surprised by how many programs simply expect their staff to be concerned at the right time and figure it out in the moment.
More recently, I looked into a missing group incident at a kayaking program. The expedition leader missed a daily check-in, and the duty officer became concerned, waited 12 hours to hear from the group, then called the Coast Guard first thing the following morning. A few hours later, the Coast Guard found the group by pinging cell phone towers.
Everybody was fine. The group was paddling along and didn’t know anyone was even looking for them. I wrote about some of the learnings from this one in a different post, called she inherited the job, but not the routines.
And, sometimes, everything doesn’t turn out okay. A colleague of mine recently supported a missing person incident for a program, and after the police were notified, they found the person had died a few dozen meters from their cabin.
They were all adults.
When it comes to supervision of children and minors, we’re all over it. It is a Problem (yes, capital P) when we don’t know where a child is. But all of the situations I describe above have one thing in common: the participants and unaccounted-for people were adults.
When someone is in our care, whether a child, an adult participant, or a group leader, we have a responsibility to know where they are. It shouldn’t be left to staff to feel that “something is off about this time,” or to figure out how to conduct a hasty search in real time.
I’m curious, at what point are your staff supposed to raise the alarm, even if they just think someone is turned around or running late?
P.S. Check out Steve Smith’s podcast, Were We Lucky or Were We Good. I told the whole story about the kayak expedition near-miss, and how an organization responds to such an incident says a lot about how mature their risk management program is.