Young neighbor spots lost child

Like many of his neighbors, Chase Fischer was helping look for a 3-year-old who had wandered away from his grandmother’s home.

About 4 p.m. Wednesday, Chase spotted Marak Giesler coming out of a nearby corn field.

It brought a happy ending to a search that had lasted about four hours and included at least a dozen law enforcement officers and firefighters from the Fremont area.

Marak had been outside with his grandmother, Anita Holbrook, when she went in to use the restroom. When she came back, he was nowhere to be found.

“We started looking right away,” said Holbrook, who lives at 4924 County Road 26, Lot 15.

“He has never done this,” she added.

Holbrook lives in an area known as Schulz’s Trailer Court, which consists of two lanes off County Road 26 just northeast of Fremont.

It’s a collection of mobile homes -- some older; some abandoned -- that can provide plenty of places for a young boy to explore. It’s also a place where a young boy can get lost easily.

Marak, the son of Laura Giesler and Shawn Graves, apparently opened the gate and walked to the field east of his grandmother’s home.

Neighbors assisted Holbrook in looking for the boy, but after 30 minutes he hadn’t been located. They called the Dodge County Sheriff’s Office for help.

Deputies called in additional manpower to aid in the search. Law enforcement officers from the sheriff’s office as well as Fremont Police Department and the Nebraska State Patrol and a crew from Fremont Rural Fire Department went door to door in the rural mobile home park.

They searched through trailers and sheds along the two lanes. An officer even crawled under Holbrook’s trailer to make sure the boy had not gone there.

Police dogs from both Fremont Police Department and the State Patrol were used to help search for Marak, but with the number of people who were looking for him, it was too difficult to pick up a trail.

A State Patrol airplane also was called in to search for the missing boy and the United States ATV Search and Rescue Team was just about to join the effort when Marak walked out of the field.

He apparently had fallen asleep and had recently woken up when he was spotted by his

9-year-old neighbor.

“I saw him down the hill,” said Chase, who then showed a law enforcement officer where Marak had been.

“I’m just glad he’s back,” Holbrook said.

Outside of a few bug bites, Marak appeared to be OK, but his family was taking him to a doctor to be examined.

Family members, in an e-mail to the Tribune, said other than a few scratches, which probably came from walking through the corn field, Marak was fine.

The family also wanted to thank everyone who helped in the search.