Click the play button on the video window to the right to see the storyAfter finding the crash site of the plane his daughter was in, Phil Randolph's new mission is to improve the efficiency of searches and inter-agency communication.
"It's just haunting, not to know how you're child perished," said Randolph, but added that now he finally has closure.
Randolph's 43-year-old daughter Marcy and Phoenix attorney William Westover went missing in 2006. They were last seen getting on a Cessna plane at Deer Valley Airport, with 54-year-old Westover behind the wheel.
The plane was found Monday in the Red Rock Secret Mountain Wilderness Area between Sycamore and Oak Creek canyons northwest of Sedona.
Years after officials stopped looking, Phil Randolph continued organizing private search parties, tracking coordinates and tracing paper trails.
He reinstated his pilot's license and spent countless hours hiking through treacherous valleys looking for the wreckage.
The break in the case came when a Forest Service employee dug up a report of a small fire on the Coconino and Yavapai County line. The report listed the fire the day after the pair went missing.
Randolph said he requested all fire reports in 2006, but that it had not surfaced because it was out by the time crews got reached the location reported by hikers. Randolph said federal agents did not communicate to Forest Service personnel that they should be looking for the downed plane.
"I hope that some other family doesn't have to go through this, two years and seven months of searching, where if the integration of the data, that plane would have been found in less than 24 hours," said Randolph.
"I'm not blaming anybody, except, frankly, NTSB, which had the wrong time of takeoff, wrong location of the last known position, wrong fuel on board-- all of those things that are critical for development of search scenario, and in two and a half years, I could not get them to change it."
Now Randolph is pushing for more inter-agency cooperation, more transparency for volunteers and family members who want to join in search efforts, and reassigning regional, rather than county, jurisdictions.
He said the Internet was the most powerful tool in reigning in tips and volunteers to find his daughter, and that he will offer up the website devoted to finding her to any family looking for their loved ones.
"The only way that I could ever repay the hundreds of people who have helped me, is to try to do something to pass along to the next one," said Randolph.
