Ledger Mann, 9, at home with some of his LGM bags on Oct. 25. —Matt Eich for TIME

The little lost boy in Dinwiddie County could not know about the effort the grownups were making to find him. He hadn’t been gone very long, but the county in Virginia is wooded, with streams and thickets and tangles. Any child could become hopelessly lost there.

For this boy, who has autism and experiences sensory-processing challenges, the unfamiliar environment could be especially overwhelming. So the grownups mustered the police and rallied the fire department, deployed a drone, and released the dogs, all of them scouring the dense local woods.

To the profound relief of the community—to say nothing of his desperate family—the boy was soon found. He hadn’t gone far—no farther than the back deck of his home, where he had climbed into the storage cabinet below a gas grill and shut the little door behind him.…