How Wauconda couple found missing Cary man
Another frustrating day of fruitless searching was coming to a close late Saturday, and with darkness setting in, those who had gathered at Veteran Acres Park in Crystal Lake to begin the hunt for 21-year-old Kyle Cuchna were dismissed until morning.
Among those looking for the Cary man who had been missing since Jan. 10 were Tina Leigh, her boyfriend Tim Kleich and their 7-year-old son, Jonathan.
After returning to their Wauconda home for a bite to eat, Leigh decided she wasn't ready to call it a day.
“I said, 'No, we can't give up,'” Leigh said Sunday. “We were both, like, 'We've got to find this boy.'”
Rather than seeing the nighttime as a hindrance, the couple realized it might be their ally.
“During the day he can be anywhere,” Leigh said. “Businesses are open. He can be walking around anywhere. At night, he is limited to a shelter or, like, a McDonald's, a Wal-Mart. He's limited to where he can go in from the cold and warm up.
“We were just determined to find Kyle,” she said.
That determination paid off late Saturday when Leigh and Kleich found Cuchna — hungry, tired and disoriented, but more importantly safe and alive — in a Wauconda church's homeless shelter.
“I said, 'Kyle.' And he said, 'Yes.' And he looked confused,” Leigh said of the moment she approached Cuchna at Messiah Lutheran Church. “And I literally broke down in tears and I ran up to him and I hugged him. I said, 'Thank God you're safe.'”
Leigh contacted Kyle's brother, Erik Cuchna of Palatine, who raced to the shelter from Woodstock, where he was handing out missing person fliers.
“Sure enough, it was him,” Erik said. “He was tired, hungry. We brought him home. Got him something to eat. Told him to get some rest.”
It was the first time anyone who knew Kyle had seen him in more than a week.
According to police and family members, Kyle went missing the evening of Jan. 10 after leaving the Cary United Methodist Church. A family member called police Wednesday night to report not hearing from Kyle, who has bipolar disorder, for several days.
In the days that followed, Kyle's family used social media, traditional news outlets and a network of friends and supporters to spread the word of his disappearance. A large-scale search launched out of Crystal Lake on Saturday included the use of a helicopter.
Relatives were still piecing together details Sunday on where the 21-year-old had spent the past week. One fact they learned was that he spent some time at a homeless shelter in Waukegan, where they say he had been attacked by another man. Police were called to the shelter, but word never got back to Kyle's family.
Leigh said thoughts of her son with autism finding himself in a similar circumstance as Kyle motivated her to join the search effort Saturday.
“I just feel like, if this was my son, oh my God,” she said. “I understood what place (Kyle's family) were in.”
At Messiah Lutheran, Leigh met with volunteers and handed them a flier with Kyle's photo on it. One of the volunteers went to a box where
they keep the IDs of the people in the shelter, pulled one out and began nodding his head.
“'He's here. He's right behind you,'” Leigh recalls him saying.
Leigh said Kyle told her he had no idea people were searching for him.
Not long after, the phone in Paul Cuchna's Gurnee home was ringing with the good news.
“You think worst case scenario. You got to set yourself up for it. But we were lucky,” he said Sunday. “I cannot thank (enough) the people that came out yesterday to help look for him.”
He also credited his children, Lauren, Paul, Erik and Courtney, for spearheading the effort to find their brother.
“There is good in everybody, and this past week, from last Saturday night until last night, it proved itself.”