Ash Kelley

It's their kid.

And it's like...

You sit there and you're like, it won't happen to my kid.

Right.

And then when the worst happens, I don't even know how you wrap your brain around it.

It must just not feel like real life.

No, because you're like, no, this is literally the worst case scenario.

How is it actually happening?

Right.

So they had heard the news reports of people going missing along the Mexican border as it was all happening.

And they immediately worried that something bad had happened to their son once they realized he was one of those missing people.

So rather than wait to hear from the police, Jim called his brother Ken, who was a U.S.

customs agent, which was a great contact to him.

He was based in L.A.

and he asked for his help.

Now, Ken knew his nephew pretty well, and he knew that while Mark might have had a few beers now and again and, you know, maybe partied too hard every now and again, he wasn't a drug user and there wasn't anything else on that side of the border that he would have gotten caught up in.

Plus, his car was still on the American side of the border and all of his belongings were inside and they knew that he wouldn't have just abandoned all of that.

So in just a few hours, the missing persons case had escalated from a local matter to now a federal investigation.

Damn.

Yeah.