Where is Benjamin Earls?

Four months into the search for Benjamin Earls, his whereabouts remain a mystery.

Even to those closest to him, his disappearance on Aug. 3 came without warning and still lacks an explanation.

“None of it makes sense,” said his mother, Sheri Earls, “just to vanish like that.”

Ben Earls, 42, was last seen in the Pinkham area near Eureka.

The evening before her son went missing, Sheri Earls said she brought him to her property in Rexford where he spent the night in a travel trailer. At the time, Ben Earls, who was residing in West Kootenai, was suffering from a medical issue and wondered whether he should go to a hospital. Sheri Earls, who is a Eureka school nurse, determined his condition was manageable at home and expected him to recover by morning. Before going to bed, she said the two planned for her to drive him to work the next day.

But when she awoke, Ben Earls was gone.

Twice she reached him by phone that morning. The conversations were ominous from the start.

During the first call, Ben Earls told her he was lost in the woods.

“You’ll never find me,” he told his mother.

Sheri Earls told him to find a road and promised to drive out and meet him. A couple hours later, Ben Earls called back and said he was sitting on the side of Gut Creek Road. Sheri Earls said he told her there are two roads named Gut Creek Road in the Eureka area. The thoroughfare her son said he was waiting alongside is believed to be Gut Creek Trail.

“I went every place I could but I couldn’t find him,“ she said.

After the second call, Sheri Earls said she was unable to reach her son. For him to disappear without an explanation was out of character.

“I know it's a cliché to say ‘Ben always called his mom’, but Ben always called his mom,” she said.

For years, Sheri Earls said she raised Ben Earls and his brother Matt Earls on her own.

Working as a nurse, she said she worried about her sons every time she received a call from the emergency room. She trained Ben and Matt Earls from an early age to keep in touch.

“They always called me, whether it was good, bad or indifferent,” she said.

Matt Earls, who described his relationship with his brother as close, said he would have heard from Ben Earls if he had intended to disappear. He pointed out that his brother was a father and loved his two children. He would not have abandoned them.

And the money in Ben Earls’ bank account was low. He had planned to sign a buy-sell agreement the day after he vanished, which gives Matt Earls another reason to doubt he planned to drop off the grid.

Beyond not staying in touch, Matt Earls said he found his brother’s trek into the woods highly irregular. Standing five-feet eight-inches tall, weighing 240 pounds and with a bum knee and a bad shoulder, Ben Earls was not the kind of guy who went on nature walks, according to Matt Earls.

Matt Earls said he believed the reason his brother left his mother’s home early in the morning was to get back to his car so he could drive himself to work. Citing her son’s independent streak, Sheri Earls agreed with this explanation.

“He didn’t like to think he was imposing on me,” she said.

After Sheri Earls was unable to find her son on her own, the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office tried to track his phone signal. Due to the lack of cell coverage in the area, Matt Earls said deputies were not able to get an accurate reading of his location.

Along with a search and rescue team, deputies combed the area bounded by U.S. Highway 37, Gut Creek Trail and Pinkham road. While it was a relatively small area, Matt Earls said the terrain was riven with ravines, which made the search difficult.

After 72 hours, Matt Earls said officials scaled back on the ground effort until new clues surfaced.

While deputies have continued conducting interviews, Boyd White, a patrol captain with the Sheriff’s Office, said no new leads had turned up as of Nov. 9.

Deputies tried to secure Ben Earls’ phone records but Matt Earls said the company was unwilling to release them since there is no evidence to suggest the case was tied to a crime. Officials have put a freeze on the records, though, to ensure they would be accessible if the company were to make them available.

Sheri Earls understands why authorities would want to secure the phone records, but she is unsure how much the logs might help. While the records could point investigators to someone Ben Earls might have called to pick him up, Sheri Earls said her son still would have contacted her after making it out of the woods.

Both Sheri and Matt Earls thought it was unlikely that Ben Earls’ case was linked to the recent and still unsolved disappearance of Dan Dolan. The two noted, however, that there are many similarities between the two missing-person cases. Dolan, who was last seen in Troy on June 22, is roughly the same age as Ben Earls and also worked for Soft Track Attack, a wildland fire fighting team based in Troy. Dolan and Ben Earls even met last summer, during a training event only weeks before Dolan went missing.

“We can’t ignore the fact that you have two guys that were from the exact same area, that worked for the same company that vanished,” Matt Earls said.

The explanation for Ben Earls’ disappearance, according to his brother, was most likely related to a medical issue. At the time Ben Earls went missing, Matt Earls said he was seeing a doctor.

While his brother is a recovering addict of almost 20 years, Matt Earls said deputies were still investigating if alcohol or drugs were involved in the disappearance.

Recalling her son's involvement with his family and in his community, Sheri Earls said he had a heart of gold. He spent much of his time volunteering for the Eureka Fire Department and coaching his sons’ baseball and wrestling teams.

“Ben doesn’t know a stranger,” Sheri Earls said. “He is an excellent dad.”

Matt Earls echoed his mother’s warm sentiments saying his brother was always trying to help others reform their lives. Having overcome substance abuse, Ben Earls did what he could to help other addicts on their road to recovery.

As the months pass without any new indications arising as to Ben Earls’ whereabouts, his family members continue to seek closure.

“There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t wonder where he is,” Matt Earls said.