ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (WKBW) — A Hamburg family is breathing easier Monday after their 16-year-old son was found safe following a six-day search that mobilized law enforcement, community volunteers and a specialized nonprofit organization.
For almost a week, those involved searched wooded areas throughout Hamburg for 16-year-old Jack Beckwith.
Monday morning, neighbors joined Western New York Missing and Unidentified Persons in a search party to help bring the teen home. The nonprofit organization's mission is to reunite missing individuals with their families, offering a helping hand during the most difficult times.
"It was so great just to say, 'OK, we got him. We found him. He's alive. He's OK,'" Sarah H., Buffalo team lead for WNY Missing & Unidentified Persons, said.
"His family, especially his mother and father, they have been out day after day," Sarah said. "The Hamburg police had also been out. Niagara Frontier Search and Rescue had also been out, drones, dogs, everything, trying to find him, and for the past six days, he was able to evade them."
The nonprofit organization is run solely by volunteers like Sarah. They began assisting on Saturday, but on Monday, they approached the search differently.
"We started deploying our teams and began searching in the areas that he was last spotted, and so today what we did was basically map out different areas," Sarah said.
They took note that the teen had been going through a mental health crisis. They broke into teams and sent people out to those sectors to search, and shortly after, success came.
WATCH: Missing Hamburg teen found safe after 6-day search by family, volunteers, law enforcement
"He was spotted in a backyard, close to where we were searching," Sarah said.
When asked what it was like when they found him, Sarah said she had actually just left, but the team that was there had a group chat going.
"I actually really choked up," Sarah said. "I was so elated. I'm so excited. I remember texting his dad and just saying like, 'I'm just praying today is the day.'"
These are the kinds of searches WNY Missing & Unidentified Persons is requested for.
"We do a lot of these searches and they don't always turn out well, and sometimes they can have an ending," Sarah said. "That's pretty tough to deal with, not only for us but the family members, especially."
They even work on cold cases, like that of Sheryl Rucci. A more recent missing persons case is that of 17-year-old Payton Donna Hartman from Lackawanna, according to National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
"Trying to find anywhere else that we could find, like details about it, like where did she go missing, how long was she missing before people noticed? Did she go with somebody? There's like really almost none of that was available," Sarah said. "We kind of can't go after every single missing case we come across. We have to wait for people to kind of ask us to help or to activate."
I reached out to Lackawanna police for an update on her disappearance and I'm waiting to hear back.
Anyone interested in becoming a volunteer for WNY Missing and Unidentified Persons can send an email to WNYmissingandunidentified@yahoo.com.
