It was a potentially dire situation, fortunately, with a happy ending.

"I picked him up and he wouldn't let me go. He just grabbed onto me and his face, [his] reaction was just priceless," Jonathan Guzman, the uncle of missing five-year-old boy Gage Wymer, said. 

"When you first get that initial call. You think for the worst."

The missing boy had been reunited with his family after going missing eight hours earlier.

"I'm feeling relieved and thankful that every friend and family [member] and neighbor and beyond came out to help me find him," Gage's mother, Rebecca Westhead said.

Roughly 60 community members came together, canvassing neighborhoods and blocks, both on foot and by car. They eventually found the missing boy.

Jessica Dickerson was the one who found Gage, asleep on a porch about two blocks away from where his family last saw him.

"[It's] just a mother motherly instinct, it's just like instantly. I have nine kids myself so it's something I wouldn't even be able to imagine," she said.

"There was a lady that was riding up the road helping us look for him and she spotted him. It was a bunch of joy, there are no words that could explain the relief," Guzman said.

The situation was tense given that the five-year-old had just recently had a tracheotomy tube removed from his throat and is, for the most part, unable to speak.

"He knows three words now: mom, up and hi. If you can see, we are in the healing process," his mother said.

And after today, with what feels like a second chance, Gage's family is not only thankful but hopeful for what's ahead for their five-year-old boy.

"He starts school next year. With his speech, he's slowly learning to talk more, so yes, all good things [are] coming. But, I'm just happy to have him back," Westhead said.