In 1991, a missing persons case rocked James Hinkle’s hometown of Clinton, Mo. The abduction of Angela Hammond, a 20-year-old taken from a phone booth as she called her fiancé, garnered national attention and a feature on “Unsolved Mysteries.” For Hinkle, it also sparked a lifelong fascination. The disappearance hit too close to home for Hinkle, who was chilled to think that clues to her whereabouts could have been anywhere, undiscovered, along the country roads near his home.

“That never left me,” Hinkle told The Washington Post. “That whole experience — just like that, somebody could be gone — never left me for my entire life.”

For years, Hinkle followed missing persons cases in Missouri. He listened to podcasts and scrolled through Reddit threads. And he wondered, like every true-crime aficionado, if he would ever solve a mystery himself.

It wasn’t out of the question. Few could boast the skills that Hinkle acquired over his life: He had worked at times as a volunteer firefighter, a camera drone operator and a rescue scuba diver. In 2022, Hinkle learned of a story that was too heart-wrenching to put down: The case of Donnie Erwin, a Navy veteran who had vanished almost a decade ago after leaving for a short drive near the Lake of the Ozarks, right in Hinkle’s backyard. He got his drone, his diving gear and a kayak, and took up the search.

For months, Hinkle scoured backcountry roads and kayaked through lakes and flooded quarries in the region, documenting his trips on YouTube. In December, Hinkle, piloting his drone, noticed an odd silhouette in a pond near a road not far from Erwin’s former home.

The silhouette appeared to be Erwin’s car. Hinkle alerted investigators, who recovered human remains and a metal hip of the same make as Erwin’s. A Christmas Day announcement from the Camden County Sheriff’s Office confirmed Hinkle’s remarkable achievement: He had made the breakthrough in a missing persons case that had sat cold for almost a decade.

“I try not to be too proud of myself,” Hinkle said. “I wanted to go out and go to work, and do something nice for this guy that I’d never met.”

The case of Donnie Erwin, like many disappearances, had simmered as a local mystery before fading with time, leaving the burden of grieving and searching to a weary family. Erwin, then 59, left his home in Camdenton, Mo., in December 2013 in his Hyundai Elantra to drive to a nearby gas station and pick up cigarettes. He never returned. Authorities searched in the hills and lakes of the Ozarks by foot, on horseback and by boat, but they never found Erwin or his car.

Yvonne Erwin-Bowen, Erwin’s younger sister, took on the task of keeping her brother’s memory alive and sustaining an increasingly disheartening search. She distributed fliers with Erwin’s information across the Ozarks, standing at street corners and driving to bass tournaments in hopes that fishermen with sonar-equipped boats might offer their help. She posted regular updates on a Facebook page, “Find Donnie Erwin,” which drew a community of sympathetic followers and others searching for missing loved ones in the state.

On occasion, volunteer groups moved by Erwin-Bowen’s story picked up the search. They faced a mystery that grew more confounding with each unsuccessful outing. Erwin had left home with nothing but a gift card. The gas stations he frequented were close by, and he used crutches after losing part of his left leg, so it was doubtful that he had traveled far without his car. But with every year, he seemed to fade deeper and deeper into the wilds of the Ozarks.

Erwin-Bowen remained hopeful on her Facebook page. She wrote posts addressed to her missing brother when she hung a Christmas ornament with his name on it, as well as in February, when his Kansas City Chiefs won their most recent Super Bowl. But by then, she had decided that she could not bear to spend another year searching for her brother herself.

“I had spent nine years pounding the pavement,” Erwin-Bowen said, “and still having the same heartbreak every single time.”

Hinkle learned of Erwin from a friend in 2022. It pulled at him like the countless other missing persons cases he had pored over, but another detail about Erwin’s story stood out: Erwin was a Navy veteran who had served on an aircraft carrier during the Vietnam War. Hinkle’s son had joined the Marines. It was enough to finally bring him to act on his curiosity for missing persons cases. Maybe, this time, he could join the hunt, too.

Hinkle, who works as a videographer, organized search trips in his spare time to quarries and state parks in the state. At each body of water, he combed the depths for anything resembling Erwin’s car, first with a kayak outfitted with sonar gear, then by scuba diving. He documented the searches on a YouTube channel that he created after taking on Erwin’s case. For about a year, he was also unsuccessful. But Hinkle was compelled to continue as the case neared its 10th anniversary.

“It was frustrating,” Hinkle said. “But, you know, you mark those pins off your map. You get up the next day and schedule another time to go out and look. And you never give up, and you never lose.”

By December, Hinkle had traversed several caves and quarries, filed a Freedom of Information Act request to check whether a regional military base had encountered Erwin’s vehicle and backtracked to Erwin’s childhood home in Kansas City, Mo. He decided to start the search anew from Erwin’s Camdenton home. On Dec. 14, Hinkle was guiding his drone down a highway near Camdenton when he spotted an odd silhouette in a small pond. He took his kayak onto the pond and confirmed the shape he had seen from above was a car.

“If you asked me three days ago what I’d be doing today, it wouldn’t be this,” a breathless Hinkle said to his camera in a video he recorded of the search. “I’d hoped, but I wouldn’t have guessed this.”

Hinkle contacted the Camden County Sheriff’s Office. A few days later, authorities pulled the car up from the pond to discover a sodden, algae-covered Hyundai Elantra with Erwin’s license plate. Investigators eventually recovered human remains and a metal hip that was consistent with one that Erwin had before his disappearance, according to the sheriff’s office.

The sheriff’s office notified Erwin-Bowen of the discovery of the remains on Christmas Eve, as her family, and Erwin’s son, prepared to gather for the holidays.

“It was the best Christmas ever,” Erwin-Bowen said. “Just knowing that I can finally lay my brother to rest.”

Investigators are still waiting on an autopsy report to confirm that the remains recovered from the pond belong to Erwin, and plan to drain the pond to search for any additional evidence, according to a sheriff’s office spokesperson. Erwin-Bowen said that once the family has confirmation, they will hold a funeral for Erwin in the Ozarks and cremate his remains for his son to take home.

Hinkle said he’s still reeling from the unlikely conclusion to his search.

“When the reality kind of finally set in — you know, we’d found this guy, one of our veterans is coming home — I’ve had moments where I just sit alone and try to keep myself together,” he said.

Once he gathers himself, Hinkle said he plans to continue working on other missing persons cases in Missouri. The details of Angela Hammond’s story are still seared in his mind. And he knows now that with a kayak, a drone and a YouTube channel, even the coldest cases can be cracked.

“If somebody said, ‘Hey, we’re going to go search,’ ” Hinkle said, “I’d be there. Absolutely.”