It is estimated that there are hundreds of thousands of missing persons reported each year in the United States.  Todd Matthew, director of the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NAMUS) said “In 2012, we had 661,000 cases of missing persons, and that’s just from that one year. Very quickly, 659,000 of those were canceled. So that means those persons either come back in some cases, located as deceased persons, maybe never an unidentified person, or just a total misunderstanding. So at the end of 2012, of those 661,000 minus the canceled, we had 2,079 cases that remained at the end of the year as unresolved.”  But for a parent or loved one searching for a missing person those statistics provide no comfort.

Imagine the panic and fear that crashes through a parent when their young child doesn’t make it home from school one day.  That is exactly how Sheri Haus felt earlier this week when her 6 year old son never walked in the door after getting off the school bus.  It started off as a regular day for Ethan Haus of Becker, MN a city 46 miles northwest of Minneapolis.  He went to school with his siblings and all of his friends and then came home on the bus.  But on this day, instead of going into the house he decided to run off and play with his best buddy, his dog Remington.

When Ethan didn’t come home at 4PM on Tuesday afternoon Sheri called the sheriff’s office to report him missing.  Quickly a search party of around 600 officers, FBI agents, emergency responders, and volunteers formed to look for young Ethan.  The search parties began looking for Ethan the traditional way.  They were methodically combing the area, going into people’s yards, behind buildings, and through corn fields.  As the sun began to set and the temperatures dropped  into the low 40s, the search became more frantic.

This is when Steve Fines of Fines Imaging decided to think outside of the box in the search for Ethan.  Steve is an commercial aerial drone photographer working out of St. Cloud just under 20 miles southeast of Becker.  He normally uses his drone to photograph commercial and private real estate properties, and the wonders of the city around him.  Steve also specializes in capturing thermal images with his drone for the inspection of solar panels and damaged roofs.  According to his website he uses “a 640×480 30Hz Advanced Radiometric FLIR camera attached to a drone to capture thermal images and video.”

It was with Steve’s drone that Ethan was finally found just before 2AM the following Wednesday morning.  It was around 9 in the evening when Steve arrived at the search scene. He said, “You could see lines of people with flashlights off in the darkness, moving through fields.”  Being the responsible drone operator that he is, Steve quickly found the command center to get permission and instructions for using his drone to help search for the boy.  Once the drone was up in the air Steve was able to clearly see the thermal signatures of the search parties.  He began sweeping his drone further out over the field, until a solitary, still thermal signature showed up.

Steve related the exact spot of where his drone was hovering over Ethan in the middle of the corn field and waited as officers ran full speed about 3/4 of a mile to get to the location.  “On the screen, I could watch their thermal images appear, and one of them grabbed the boy.  You knew what had happened,” Steve said.  Ethan, who had been kept warm by cuddling with Remington, was found almost a mile east of his home.  

County Sheriff, Joel Brott said of the effort to find Ethan, it “was the epitome of a community caring for its own.  To see the outpouring of support in such a short time period to come out and help find this boy and his dog is heartwarming.  If not for that drone, I’m not sure we would have found him.”  Today Ethan is home safe with his family.  In a video released by the sheriff’s department Ethan says, “Thank you for finding me, you make my heart full.”