Seventeen-year-old Virgil Wade Tackett left Ohio for Southeast Alaska in late spring 1986 for a summer job and disappeared on June 11, 1986, near Pelican. He and a 16-year-old friend, Nick Bevans, had gone out in a 14-foot skiff to explore nearby islands. The friend says Virgil dropped him and a dog off on a small island and never returned. The skiff was found less than a mile away, run aground on a sandbar near Chichagof Island with the motor in gear; a radio, a rifle, and two life jackets were inside, but Virgil was not wearing one. The only other item linked to him was a zipper pull from his vest found in the boat’s bottom. An oar was found the next day; no other trace turned up despite a U.S. Coast Guard search.

Alaska State Troopers initially concluded he likely fell out and drowned, a finding his family disputes. Unconfirmed sightings were reported in Juneau, Sitka, Hoonah, and a possible sighting in Kingston, Ontario, in 1998. Between October 1986 and January 1987, a woman phoned a missing children’s group three times claiming knowledge of Wade’s condition; the calls were never traced. Did anyone in the Pelican area or who knew Wade follow up on those anonymous calls or the later reported sightings?