RUSSELLVILLE (KFSM) -- A local soldier who went missing outside of Salt Lake City three years ago and was never found was given military honors Saturday (Nov. 1) after being declared dead.
Joe Bushling was an Army Specialist in Dugway, Utah.
"We have concentrated all our money and all our efforts on this for the last three and a half years,” said his father, Kevin, beside his mother, Lisa.
He went missing on Mother's Day in 2011 after going for a drive early in the morning.
Bushling left a voicemail with a friend, saying he was out of gas and needed help. He also mentioned that he was cold, and had lost his flip flops. His parents said he used the t-shirt he was wearing to protect his feet in the desert.
His parents made several trips to Utah to search for him.
"Things don't mean anything when you get to that point. Items mean nothing,” Kevin said. “You need money. You need money to do these searches. At that time, I think we got down to where we had six dinner plates. What would you do -- what would you give up to find your son?”
The Army labeled him “Absent Without Leave,” or AWOL, 30 days after he went missing.
"I told my wife -- I said, ‘We are not doing a memorial service until they change that status.’”
$27,000 on search efforts, and three years later, they were given a death certificate. This is what made it possible for a six-man honor guard from the Army to present his family with a flag.
"[What] my wife and I truly are going to miss out of all of this whole thing, is we will never have grandchildren,” Kevin said. “And that was something that we had looked forward to for a long time, was to have grandchildren. And it's hard to think about that."
Bushling was 26 years old.
Exactly what happened to him remains a mystery.
The Criminal Investigative Division of the Army closed his case in 2012, according to his parents.