A 3-year-old boy who went missing in central Utah’s West desert for more than 12 hours in below-freezing temperatures has been found safe. Dillon Bell, a father of three, discovered and rescued the young boy. He had frequented the area where the boy was said to have gone missing and had previously visited the area with his daughters, looking for rocks. Dillon Bell canceled his deer hunting trip with his brother-in-law after learning about the missing boy and joined the Beaver County Search and Rescue effort.

While the rest of the team was pushing east from an area that had not yet been searched. Bell had a feeling the boy would be discovered in the west. So he left the group and went in the opposite direction. As he climbed the hill, he began calling out the boy’s name and eventually heard a small, faint voice respond. As he moved forward, his voice became clearer and louder. “It was one of the most bizarre feelings,” Bell said.

“It was something I will remember for the rest of my life, just the craziest emotions you could imagine.” He recognized the boy’s pink snow boots right away and knew he’d found him. “The moment I saw him… “I just ran up there and picked him up when I came around the corner and saw pink snow boots,” Bell explained. “It was an insane, insane moment.” Bell descended the hill with the boy in his arms, back to his truck, and warmed and comforted the boy, who was visibly cold and scared.

He returned to the staging area, where paramedics attended to Mo-Mo. Bell described it as a surreal experience that he would remember for the rest of his life. The search and rescue team, as well as everyone else on the mountain looking for the missing boy, were overjoyed and grateful to have discovered ‘Mo-Mo’ alive and well. Bell and Mo-father Mo’s later met, briefly conversed and hugged. His instincts had undoubtedly saved the boy. “It was truly amazing to see all of the good people in this world doing whatever they could to help a family they had never met before,” he said.