Editorial: Community's warmth, resolve helps find missing man

Tina Leigh didn't know Kyle Cuchna until she met him late Saturday night at a homeless shelter in Wauconda.

She didn't know his family either and she didn't become Facebook friends with Kyle's older brother until the next day. But when Tina met Kyle, she threw her arms around him and bawled her eyes out just the same. A goodly number of people from McHenry County and beyond had been looking for Kyle for a week.

That the 22-year-old Cary man with bipolar disorder was found safe, albeit confused, was a tremendous relief to his family and, judging by the world of Facebook, a vast network of searchers, friends, acquaintances, link sharers and other third-party well-wishers.

Thanks to a variety of news reports on Kyle having been missing for several days from a Cary church and a robust call for a search party and a sharing of leads on Kyle's whereabouts on social media, Tina and her boyfriend got involved in the search.

Tina, a mother of five, has a son with autism, and when she learned of Kyle's disappearance she knew she had to get involved.

"I just feel like, if this was my son, oh my God," she told staff writer Steve Zalusky in a story in Monday's paper. "I understood what place (Kyle's family) were in."

Tina, her boyfriend Tim Kleich and their 7-year-old son Jonathan spent Saturday searching for Kyle. They visited a Wal-Mart store and gas stations. They put fliers on windshields.

When the search was called off for the night, they went back to their Wauconda home for a bite to eat. But Lisa had an idea. And she wasn't ready to give up. Darkness, she thought, could be her ally.

"During the day he can be anywhere," she said. "Businesses are open. He can be walking around anywhere. At night, he is limited to a shelter or a McDonald's, a Wal-Mart. He's limited to where he can go in from the cold and warm up."

There had been word that during the week Kyle had been at a homeless shelter miles away in Waukegan, so Leigh went through the list of churches in the area that play host to homeless shelters. The church in Wauconda was last on the list.

"We were just determined to find Kyle," she said.

Elk Grove Village reader Charles Glomski wrote us in reaction to this and another story on Monday's front page: "Despite all the things in the world that appear to be wrong or broken, good things keep happening in spite of the way things look. I can't remember being touched by and feeling grateful for people who can identify with those who are suffering and do things to make it better."

We were equally touched by this tremendous outpouring of caring and awed by the way in which a community - augmented by the power of social media - can unite for a common goal.

Job well done, everyone.