It started at 7 a.m. Thursday when Burnett County Sheriff Dean Roland and Polk County Sheriff Tim Moore arrived at the search command center to lay out the strategy for the day.

They had to define the search areas for the teams of volunteers that they were sure would arrive to help in the search for 25-year-old Keith Kennedy, missing since Sunday evening from the Trade Lake Camp for disabled men and women.

The volunteers start arriving, coming in groups or singles, all hoping that today will be the day they can find the young camper.

On Wednesday more than 500 volunteers came to aid in the search and by 3 p.m. Thursday, nearly 400 had signed the yellow sheet on the check in table next to the command center.

Mark Bildsoe, a physician from Eau Claire interrupted his vacation to drive up to the Grantsburg area to help search.

“I read the story in the paper and suddenly nothing else seemed more important,” said Bildsoe.

The canine search team with their yellow lab, Abe, from St. Louis County in Minnesota arrived in the middle of the afternoon.

They had to be back in Duluth to be on duty at 10 p.m., but they just wanted to be there helping they said.

Peter Barber, a friend of the Kennedy family had been out on the search all day. “I’ve known Keith for 20 years, but he may or may not respond to me,” said the concerned Barber.

And that concern is related to the fact that Kennedy suffers from autism. Autism is characterized by impaired social interaction, problems with verbal and nonverbal communication, and unusual, repetitive, or severely limited activities and interests.

Sheriff Roland said that this is adding to the difficulty in the search. “We don’t have one clue after more than three days of intense searching,” said a frustrated Roland.

“We have helicopters and fixed wing aircraft. We have the best dog search teams out. We have done infrared searches from the air. We have used every tool at our disposal and we still have nothing,” Sheriff Roland went on.

Roland asked the public to be very observant, “because we don’t have a clue where he might show up.”

The search parties have covered 14 square miles in their efforts, all of it through dense woods and grasses over some very difficult terrain including marshes and hills.

Roland is concerned about the possibility that someone may have given Kennedy a ride and because of the limited communication skills of the young man, may have just dropped him off or possibly brought him to a health care facility.

“We are sending teletypes to all area hospitals and law enforcement departments, as a precaution,” explained Roland.

At 1:30 PM on this hot sunny afternoon a report came in that someone was calling for help in an area south of the fairgrounds near Grantsburg. Groups of volunteers were dispatched by bus to the area, but as of 4:30 PM no one had seen anything positive.

At 2:30 PM Sheriff Roland went out with two volunteers to investigate a possible footprint seen in a marshy field earlier in the day.

By the end of the day the volunteers were heading out without success. Another group would be back for the next day’s search.

Over the weekend the hope is that the number each day will be close to 1000 if they are still needed.

It will be those nameless hands and feet that will finally bring this search to an end. Those hundreds that have come from all over the Midwest because there was nothing more important to do.