Huge Search for 'Missing' Hikers Ends in Unlikely Spot

A huge search was launched in North Carolina after Tesla Rackley, 20, and boyfriend Anthony Logan, 25, got separated from the people they were hiking with in the Pisgah National Forest Saturday and were reported missing, NBC News reports. But after at least 200 people got involved in an expensive three-day search, the couple were found Tuesday afternoon—playing music on a street corner in Asheville, 30 miles from where they had last been seen, the Henderson County Sheriff's Office says. Rackley and Logan say they hitchhiked downtown and "didn't have a clue" they had been reported missing, an officer says.

"When we spoke with them they had no idea that we had spent parts of the last three days looking for them," a sheriff's rep tells the Asheville Citizen-Times. "They had no clue to the amount of resources, money and time people invested to making sure they were safe and secure." (The search included helicopter sweeps.) Family and friends had been worried because the pair weren't experienced hikers, and they weren't dressed to endure the cold temperatures in the forest for any length of time. It turns out they needn't have worried. (An embezzling suspect hid for years on the Appalachian Trail.)