SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – A 19-year-old man who disappeared from his family’s home in California nearly three years ago was found in Utah, much to the surprise and relief of his parents, who feared they would never see him again. .
Concorge Oswalt was trembling and cold when sheriff’s deputies came to him on Saturday to sleep in a convenience store in Summit County, known for its ski areas, said Sheriff Justin Martinez. Oswalt seemed to have lived on the street there for about two weeks.
His family has been looking for him for years, handing out flyers, scanning social media and desperately chasing fruitless tracks. They even moved back to his hometown, Idaho Falls, hoping he would eventually return.
“Any hints of something that remotely resembles him will follow,” said his stepfather, Gerald Flint. “It was a nightmare.” Oswalt, who was diagnosed with autism and other mental illnesses, was 17 when he left the family’s home in Clearlake, California. His mother, Susan Flint, remembered making quesadillas, but when it was time for lunch, he left.
“I never stopped looking for him. “There was not a day that I didn’t look for him, in some form or way,” she said. The exact circumstances surrounding his disappearance and whereabouts over the past two years are being clarified, police said.
What his family knows is that after lawmakers found Oswalt in a Utah store, they asked if he would like to come in their patrol car and keep warm. He agreed and eventually let the police take his fingerprint.
This led to an unfulfilled February order in Nevada.
“The deputies just felt that there was something there, something outside the criminal order. There was a humanitarian effort that needed to be further explored, “Martinez said.
Officers set about handing over documents in search of reports of missing and endangered children. After about 16 pages, they found a 2019 missing person report from Clearlake, California. Although there was a slightly different spelling of the name than Nevada’s order, the photos matched and they called his family.
When Flint first received the call, they were worried that their son had been found dead. After his wife confirmed her identity through a birthmark, Gerald Flint quit his job, jumped in his car and drove four hours to Utah.
“Everyone in the room was in tears. “They went beyond everything, they put in hours of work,” he said. “They could have rejected it, but they didn’t, and that made everything different in the world.”
Autism-conscious social workers took care of Oswalt after reuniting with his family, said Summit County Sheriff’s Lt. Andrew Wright. His family hopes to bring him home soon.
“We did not treat him as a criminal. “We acted like someone who has something deeper that we need to delve into,” Martinez said. “That intuition is what really united this family.”
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