Thirteen-year-old James Yoblonski disappeared from his Reedsburg, Wisconsin, home in the early morning hours of June 12, 2023. He left in the family van around 1:00 a.m., taking his father’s cell phone, and was reported missing at 9:00 a.m. that morning. GPS and witness checks show he drove for several hours and stopped twice at his father’s business in Wisconsin Dells before the van was found abandoned on the westbound lane of Highway 12 near the Baraboo Bluffs, close to Devil’s Lake State Park.

Search teams discovered what appeared to be makeshift campsites: one across the highway up a steep hill with the father’s phone and some personal items, and a second in Devil’s Lake State Park containing a jug of water, socks, and a knife sheath. Two wilderness survival guides and a handgun were also missing from the family home, and device searches showed James had researched how to leave the state in the months before he vanished. An intensive ground search lasted about four days before shifting to patrols; law enforcement asked the public not to conduct independent searches because of dangerous terrain.

Which readers in the Devil’s Lake or Baxter’s Hollow area remember seeing a teen matching James’s description or anything unusual around June 12, 2023?