Little did Suzanne Flint know that she was missing her son while she was making lunch. But when it came time to eat the quesadillas she had made one day in September 2019, 17-year-old Connerjack Oswalt was gone, the Associated Press reported. Oswalt, who had previously been diagnosed with autism and mental health problems, had a history of fleeing and had already done so earlier that year. His mother spent the next two years looking for him. He posted leaflets, scanned social media posts and searched national databases on missing children, the AP reported. Checked morgues. When a fire severely damaged her home in Clearlake, California, she fled to Idaho, hoping her son could return to his hometown. “I never stopped looking for him. “There was not a day that I was not looking for him, in any form or way,” he told the AP. Her husband and Oswalt’s stepfather, Gerald Flint, was by her side as every promising lead withered in disappointment. They feared they would never see him again, according to the AP. “We have had a lot of false hopes over the last two and a half years,” Gerald Flint told KSTU. Then earlier this month, the couple took another lead: a call from Utah sheriff’s deputies who believed the 19-year-old man they had found sleeping and shivering outside a gas station on April 9 was Oswalt, according to with a Summit County Sheriff. Post the office on Facebook. Their sensation became stronger when they found a mark on the man’s neck similar to the one described by his mother, CNN reported. Gerald Flint quit his job and started driving the approximately 240 miles to Summit County to see if they had finally found their adopted son or if it was still a dead end. Residents in Summit County had begun to worry about the man who appeared homeless and had been spotted pushing a shopping cart in recent weeks – some so much that they called for law enforcement. Whenever the sheriff’s deputies checked on him, they found the man obeying the law and not accepting their offers of help. Deputies sent him on his way. Then, on April 9, a “really anxious” resident told the sheriff’s office about a young man sleeping outside a local convenience store. When the deputies arrived, they discovered the man they had met before. Until that moment, he seemed to be homeless for a few weeks and we were shaking and “obviously [having] “It’s a tough night,” Summit County Sheriff Justin Martinez told KSTU. The deputies persuaded him to sit in their cruiser to warm up. Although he did not give them his name, he let them scan his fingerprint. They got a hit: “Connerjack Oswald” – written with a “d” – who had an arrest warrant from Nevada in February. Instead of arresting him, the sheriff’s office continued to dig, in part because “it was clear to MPs that the man was communicating differently,” and they felt there was more to the story, according to the sheriff’s office. The perpetrators began to go through the case database from the National Center for Missing and Child Abuse. After 16 pages of names and photos, they found one for Connerjack Oswalt, a teenager who had disappeared from California 2 years earlier. Investigators identified and contacted Flint as soon as they “felt confident about their identities.” After Gerald Flint arrived from Idaho Falls and inspected the man’s allegedly adopted son, he pulled out his phone. With MPs accompanying him, Flint called his wife. “It is him;” asked. “A little bigger,” Gerald told her, “but yes.” “My beloved is alive,” he said as he wept over the phone. Social workers responded to help Oswalt after his recognition, USA Today reported. He is still being cared for at a treatment facility in Utah, although the Flint plans to eventually bring him to their home in Idaho Falls. Investigators are still trying to figure out how he ended up in Utah and what happened between his disappearance and April 9th. “That remains the big question,” Lt. Col. Andrew Wright of the Summit County Sheriff told USA Today. “Where has his journey taken him in the last two and a half years?” Right now, his mother is glad to know where he is. “We are grateful he is safe and alive and we have our son back,” he told KSTU. “This is the most important thing for us.”
