It was filed not by Carolanne Voss. She would not know her son was missing for another 16 hours, but by Ray Tilman, the desk clerk at Roosevelt Lodge, who had grown concerned when Daniel failed to return by 6:00 in the evening as specified on his permit, and who had waited an additional 2 hours watching the parking area through the lobby window before walking across to the contact station to speak with the duty ranger.
The duty ranger at Roosevelt Lodge that evening was a 29-year-old seasonal employee named Frank Casillus, a compact dark-haired man from Albuquerque, who was completing his third summer in the park and who had in that time participated in 14 search and rescue operations ranging from a lost child recovered within 4 hours to a climber fatality on the Absuroka range.
He took the report seriously and immediately. By 9:00 in the evening, he had radioed Canyon Village and the park’s law enforcement division, relayed the permit information, and organized an initial search team of three rangers to cover the Tower Junction area with headlamps.
