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ST. GEORGE — Macin Smith has been missing for nearly three years, but those who are concerned about his welfare – from family and friends to strangers across the U.S. – haven’t given up on looking for him.

Joylne Gailey told St. George news that a friend of hers added her a year ago to the Help Find Macin Smith #MacinsArmy Facebook page, which has garnered over 56,500 followers. She said it changed her life. Now she’s driving to St. George to help orchestrate a desert search for Smith on Sept. 8.

“You see things on the news, and you think to yourself ‘how sad,'” Gailey told St. George News, “but I clicked on the page and looked at the story; it was enough to intrigue me, so I checked back every few days. The more I looked into it, the more I felt like I actually knew Macin. He very much reminded me of my own son, very similar in age.”

Smith was 17 years old when he was deemed missing Sept. 1, 2015, after leaving his home that morning and not returning. Since his disappearance, he’s received international attention from over 100 different countries, and his story appeared on the show "Disappeared" on Investigation Discovery in 2017.

Now the search continues for Smith with a desert search Sept. 8 in the area of 3000 East Banded Hills Drive. This is an area members of #MacinsArmy have searched before.

“We actually decided to revisit an area that has already been done,” Gailey said. “After almost three years we have better knowledge, and we are able to think more clearly as to what his thoughts could have been or how far he could have traveled.”