Local police have searched for multiple missing people in recent months. At least two of those searches ended in tragedy. One man’s whereabouts remain unknown.

When a person goes missing, search and rescue teams use data, dogs, and digital tools to find them. The most effective tool in bringing someone home safely, however, is a prompt report to police, Alpena County Sheriff Steven Kieliszewski said.

As incident commander of Alpena County Search and Rescue, a local volunteer search organization, Kieliszewski last week led a two-day search for a missing man in a wooded Presque Isle County conservation area.

Searchers did not find the man.

News Photo by Julie Riddle The phone of Alpena County Sheriff Steven Kieliszewski on Tuesday displays a photo of a camper taken by a drone during a search for a missing man in Presque Isle County last week.

“The biggest mistake people make when they have a missing person is waiting to call for help,” Kieliszewski said. “The longer the wait, the further away an individual gets, which makes it a hell of a lot more difficult for us to search, and a hell of a lot more difficult for us to find them.”

The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, a federal missing persons database, lists five unsolved cases of missing persons last seen in Northeast Michigan since 1983 — Joseph Michael Gutierrez, Charles Rutherford Jr., Lisa Knight, Mikel Schepke, and Mary Allen.

As of Thursday, NAMUS also listed the name of Abby Hill, an Alpena woman police declared missing and possibly endangered on Oct. 5.

Last week, police announced they found Hill’s body in Alpena Township, calling her death a probable homicide.

Because of the nature of Hill’s disappearance, Alpena County Search and Rescue could not assist in the search for Hill, or for Brynn Bills, an Alpena teenager whose body police found at the end of September nearly two months after she was last seen.

Courtesy Photo Joseph Michael Gutierrez

The team was called last week, however, to search for missing man Kyle Wagner.

A truck sitting for more than a week in a parking lot in Herman Vogler Conservation Area alerted police to the disappearance of Wagner, a downstater whose family had not seen him for some time.

Called to the scene, Kieliszewski first turned to a book titled “Lost Person Behavior” to establish search perimeters.

Based on data developed using once-classified military techniques for hunting submarines, the book consolidates statistics from more than 50,000 missing person incidents to tell searchers where lost people will most likely be found.

Dividing the data by terrain, climate, and characteristics of the missing person, the book indicates how far the missing person is likely to have traveled, what is most likely to have happened to them, and how great their chances are of survival, based on how long they’ve been missing.

News Photo by Julie Riddle Squiggles on a map of the Herman Vogler Conservation Area near Rogers City, as displayed on the computer of Alpena County Sheriff Steven Kieliszewski on Tuesday, show the GPS trail of search dogs looking for a missing man last week.

Using the data, Kieliszewski set up a half-mile perimeter from Wagner’s last known location — his truck — and used mapping software to determine where the team would search.

Search dogs initially picked up a scent from an item found in Wagner’s truck and followed the smell into the woods before losing it. On the second day of the search, seven dogs roamed designated portions of the conservation area, GPS devices on their collars sending their locations to their handlers, who noted GPS coordinates of spots where the dogs showed interest.

A digital map of the dogs’ paths, uploaded at the end of the day and looking like a plate of colorful ramen noodles on a computer screen, confirmed complete coverage of the designated search area.

A drone flown over the conservation area and several outlying locations, including a nearby gravel pit, gave searchers hope when it found a heat source resembling a human form, lying on the ground.

Drone coordinates guided Kieliszewski and Presque Isle County Sheriff Joe Brewbaker to the location, where they found an abandoned, black plastic car part radiating heat it had soaked up from the sun.

Courtesy Photo Lisa Knight

After a two-day canvas of the area, searchers stopped looking for Wagner, who has worried his family before by disappearing on camping trips. As of Thursday, the Presque Isle County Sheriff’s Office had no further news of the man’s whereabouts.

In January, the Alpena County search team helped look for a man missing near Tomahawk Lake, also in Presque Isle County. A note left in a vehicle indicated the man might wish to hurt himself.

The man is still missing.

“Lost Person Behavior” data suggest searching for despondent people in beautiful settings. It also says such a person’s chances for survival are 75% if found within 24 hours but drop to 11% after four days.

In recent years, searchers have been called multiple times to help find missing people in Northeast Michigan, including a child with Down syndrome found drowned last year and a despondent person in late summer.

Courtesy Photo Charles Rutherford Jr.

Kieliszewski recommends that family members of people with dementia, autism, or other health challenges that increase their chances of wandering off take precautions to help searchers find their loved ones.

Take pictures of them every day to note what they’re wearing. Take pictures of their shoes, especially the soles, so searchers can match footprints. Freeze a cotton ball with a clean sample of their DNA that search dogs can smell, he suggested.

Most importantly, when someone goes missing, “call ASAP,” Kieliszewski said. “Do not wait to call someone.”

Missing persons lasts seen in Northeast Michigan

∫ Joseph Michael Gutierrez, of Detroit, was camping in Sanborn Township with his friend in September 1983 when he went missing. His friend’s body was found offshore in Lake Huron. Joey Guitierrez was never found. Police suspected the boys attempted to swim to an island and drowned.

∫ Charles Rutherford Jr. was last seen at the Presque Isle marina in August 2005. Police found his boat, a 27-foot white cabin cruiser named Sea’s Life, the following day, 10 miles from Mackinac Island, with the running motor in neutral. Searchers found the body of Rutherford’s girlfriend several days later.

∫ Lisa Knight, a green-eyed strawberry blonde who would be 39 today, was last seen in Ossineke leaving a friend’s house on June 8, 2012. Her last known communication was a phone call made from her ex-husband’s home. Initially treated as a missing person incident, the case is now being investigated as a homicide.

∫ Mikel Schepke, a man with a tragic past that left him with mental disabilities, left on his daily walk from his home north of Rogers City on Nov, 10, 2013, and didn’t return. Extensive searches of area woods during harsh weather had to be suspended several days later because of the opening of deer hunting season. A renewed search the following spring, with K-9 units from multiple parts of the state, found nothing.

∫ Mary Allen was last seen on Jan. 22, 2015, when her brother dropped her off at her Alpena home. With gray hair and brown eyes, Allen was on prescription medication and was considered by police to be endangered.

Source: National Missing and Unidentified Persons System website

News Photo by Julie Riddle The phone of Alpena County Sheriff Steven Kieliszewski on Tuesday shows heat imagery of two searchers and a heat source with the appearance of a prone human in a photo taken by a drone during a search for a missing man in Presque Isle County last week.

Courtesy Photo Mary Allen

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