For 13 days, a little boy brought an entire city together.

Every morning, people woke up hoping that would be the day Parker Wells would come home.

Calgarians desperately searched their own properties and assisted their elderly neighbours in doing the same. Businesses displayed posters in their windows. Complete strangers knocked on doors and shared Parker’s photo with people they had never met. Across Calgary, and far beyond it, people held onto hope for a family facing every parent’s worst nightmare.

Last week, we learned the outcome none of us wanted.

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My thoughts are with Parker’s family as they navigate a loss no parent should ever have to experience. Throughout this experience, they showed extraordinary courage, grace and strength. They trusted us with the most important thing in their lives, and every decision we made was guided by that responsibility.

In my 35 years of policing, I have never witnessed anything like the response to Parker’s disappearance.

But what stayed with me most was not the scale of the operation. It........

© Calgary Herald