Passerby found missing boy walking in weeds

The Flake family was praying and talking with neighbors and church members in their back yard Tuesday morning when they received word that their missing 3-year-old son had been found.

Overcome with emotion, the boy’s mother, VaNae, nearly collapsed before sprinting down the driveway to her son, who was waiting in an ambulance.

“I couldn’t keep up,” said father Read Flake, as he held onto his sleeping son Ryan early Tuesday afternoon.

Ryan, fast asleep in his father’s arms, was doing well, despite being wet and dehydrated.

Ryan went missing about 8:30 p.m. Monday, and apparently spent 12 hours outside in the overnight storms before being found by a passing motorist about 8:30 a.m. Tuesday.

The boy’s father said this wasn’t the first time Ryan had wandered off. He’d often disappear for several minutes, but turn up playing on a tractor in their yard, or hiding in their barn near the family’s 3-acre home in Oswego Township.

But as the minutes passed Monday night and Ryan didn’t wander back, the Flakes grew concerned.

Knocking on neighbors' doors, the family asked everyone they could to keep their eyes open for their son. They contacted police, and about 300 volunteers and professionals from 25 local police agencies eventually took part in the night-long search.

In the end it was Matt Woodin of Yorkville, who has a 5-year-old of his own, who found Ryan on Tuesday morning on a patch of grass between a stream and retenion pond on Minkler Road.

The Iraq war veteran was on his way to work around 8 a.m. when he saw a little boy matching Ryan’s description. The blonde-haired toddler was stumbling in a field of weeds, soaking wet and muddy, about a mile from his home.

Woodin scooped little Ryan up, cleaned off the tot’s glasses, and called 911 to report his discovery.

“I was in the right place at the right time,” Woodin said later.

Soon after that, the boy was snuggling in his father's arms at their home in the 0-99 block of Eagle View Lane.

He was in an ambulance at about 8:30 a.m. Tuesday and returned to his parents bundled up in a blanket and exhausted.

“The boy looks dirty,” said Justin Hernandez of Oswego, who, with his mother Magi and dozens of others searched for the child. “When Ryan’s mom saw him she was crying. The parents looked relieved.”

“He fell asleep in his father’s arms,” said Magi Hernandez, who attends church with the Flakes.

The boy was checked for injuries by Oswego medics and was deemed OK. His family planned to take him to the hospital for further treatment.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they literally kept him on a short leash,” Justin Hernandez said.

About 30 minutes after the boy was reported missing from his Oswego Township home Monday, the Kendall County sheriff sent out a reverse 911 phone call to residents within a two-square mile radius of the Flake home. Volunteers spent the night and early morning combing the area.

Police and fire officials from more than two dozen agencies responded, including Oswego, Sugar Grove, Yorkville, Naperville and sheriff’s departments from Kendall, Cook and DuPage counties.

In situations like this, “we hope for the best and plan for the worst and we come out lucky,” Kendall Sheriff Richard Randall told the media.

"Everyone's just so happy," said Ryan's aunt, Sarah Flake, from her Pasadena, Calif. home. "We're so grateful for everyone who came to help."

According to neighbor Bill Lumino, the volunteers were "looking everywhere a kid could crawl." They would call out his name, and listen for any response, or for a child's crying.

"It's the worst feeling in the world (for the parents)," Lumino said of the boy's disappearance. "I never want to go through it."

Sarah Flake said Ryan was in the kitchen of the family home Monday night, eating ice cream.

The kitchen has a door that leads outside, and the family guesses Ryan simply walked out and wandered off. Sarah Flake said Ryan has wandered off before, but not like this.

"He has a tendency to wander," she said. "He doesn't speak very well, and the family has in him therapy for that. He's sometimes in his own little bubble, so they're used to him doing his own thing."

His parents were home with the family of six children when Ryan wandered off.

"They went to neighbors' houses and he wasn't there, and they called the police, and they quickly got people from the local church together and walked through the woods calling for him," Sarah Flake said.

A neighbor who lives down the street from the Flake family said they received an automated call at about 10 p.m. asking them to search their property for the missing boy. Another call went out at about 11 p.m., the neighbor said.

Rich DeCarlo, who is a member of the Flake family's church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Sugar Grove, said he received a call about the missing boy at about 9:30 p.m. Monday. He came out to help in the search and stayed until about 1 a.m., returning at about 5 a.m.

Volunteers searched nearby cornfields, where the corn is knee- or chest-high in some areas. Police used infrared cameras, specialized vehicles and helicopters during the search.