News Photo by Julie Riddle Responders confer about the possible location of a 4-year-old child who was missing Wednesday evening.

ALPENA TOWNSHIP– A 4-year-old boy who wandered off in a wooded subdivision was located safely on Wednesday evening in Alpena Township.

The child, his grandfather, and the child’s younger brother had been visiting a pond at the end of Trowbridge Drive, off of Golf Course Road, when the boy wandered off and disappeared sometime before 5 p.m. Wednesday.

After searching the area himself, the grandfather called 911 for help.

Michigan State Police responded, later requesting assistance from the Alpena County Sheriff’s Office, Michigan Department of Natural Resources, Alpena Search and Rescue, Alpena Township Fire Department, and Alpena Fire Department.

While fire personnel blocked nearby streets to control traffic and watch for the child, police and search and rescue personnel searched the surrounding wooded residential area, a portion of the Trowbridge Woods subdivision.

After a search of more than an hour, the child was located when a trooper heard a whimper from a wooded area close to the pond and found the boy crouched among the undergrowth.

The child, who was checked and cleared by paramedics, did not talk to police but was unharmed. He had been appropriately dressed for the mid-50s temperatures, incident commander Trooper K. C. Pagels, of the Michigan State Police-Alpena Post, said.

K9 Finley, a scent-specific canine member of the Alpena Search and Rescue team, showed signs of scenting the boy near where he was eventually found, but was removed to a different sector to search. By coincidence, members of Search and Rescue, many of whom live some distance from the Alpena area, had been nearby at Alpena’s APlex in the middle of the team’s weekly training when the team was activated.

Before the boy was found, K9 units from Oakland County and West Bloomfield arrived on the scene, ready to help with the search. The units were part of the group of 300-plus dogs and handlers in training this week at the Alpena Combat Readiness Training Center. Training organizers were prepared to send 50 dogs to the scene if needed, police said.

The search and rescue incident, with its happy outcome, was a striking example of well-coordinated cooperative effort between multiple law enforcement and safety organizations, Pagels said.

Julie Riddle can be reached at 989-358-5693, jriddle@thealpenanews.com or on Twitter @jriddleX.