It was mid-August, at about 10:00 p.m., when four of us from Lake Ranger Station headed south to Lake Lewis Campground to assist Grant Rangers with the search of a missing child.
As we drove the 52 miles to Lewis Lake Campground that night, we talked about search and rescue best practices we needed to keep in mind when our boots hit the ground.
When we arrived at Lewis Lake Campground an hour later, we learned it was the child’s mother who had discovered her little boy missing. It was close to 8 p.m. when she had gone back to the tent to check on her 15-month-old toddler and could not find him. Both parents and grandparents had been sitting at their campfire about 25 feet away when the child had crawled out of the tent and disappeared.
A quick search of the campground and lake shore by Grant Rangers had been unsuccessful.
A lot was going through our minds as we thought about finding this little one. There was already frost on the trees. Hypothermia was a real possibility for this little boy with any prolonged exposure to cold temperatures. There was wildlife in this area that included bears and mountain lions. What if this child had already been carried off into the woods?
While interviewing nearby campers, we learned that a small car had been seen speeding through the campground at about the same time the little boy went missing. I immediately radioed the Communication Center and requested that all vehicles leaving Yellowstone National Park be stopped and searched.
It was time to set up a grid search and move slowly and deliberately through the campground and surrounding area. It would be important for us to maintain our spacing and not take the path of least resistance as we searched for the child.
4 hours into the search, at about 3 o’clock in the morning, Ranger Harlan Kredit stood between three trees and pushed some branches aside and looked down with his headlamp and spotted the child staring up at him with his big blue eyes. Kredit gently picked him up and placed the little boy under his coat to keep him warm and safe.
Kredit got on his hand-held radio, “Tell the mother we have found her child.”
Every search team then made their way back to the Incident Command Post. As I looked around at the faces of Rangers gathered around the family, there wasn’t a dry eye among us when Kredit handed the child to his mother.
For Ranger Halan Kredit, it remains one of his most emotional moments in his 50 plus seasons as a Park Ranger in Yellowstone National Park.
“To return a 15-month-old baby to a family was an experience that is really hard to describe.”
NPS Incident Report – Yellowstone National Park
93-620 – Yellowstone (Wyoming) – Search and Rescue
On the night of Friday, August 13, 1993 rangers conducted a successful search in the Lewis Lake campground area for a 15-month-old child who’d walked away from his tent. The child’s parents discovered him missing around 10:15 p.m. Due to a number of natural hazards in the area and the age of the child, an intensive and rapidly escalating search effort was initiated which eventually put 59 searchers in the field. The toddler was located in good condition over 175 yards from his tent around 2:50 a.m. the following morning.
A Ranger's Journal 