Missing Florida Airman

Rick Sites a Air Traffic Controller at Patrick AFB in Florida is missing. Both the Air Force and Sites family are looking for help to find him. Read the Orlando Sentinel article below. If you know anything, please call the number listed.

Here's hoping Sites is just AWOL.

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PATRICK AIR FORCE BASE -- Ten days ago, Airman 1st Class Rick Sites left the base in a borrowed pickup with just his cell phone and the clothes on his back.

Neither the Air Force nor his family has heard from him since.

"We have no clues at all," said his father, Rickie Sites of Booneville, Ark. "He's not the type to just take off and not let anybody know where he's going. That's why we are so worried."

The disappearance prompted the military on Friday to ask for the public's help in finding Sites, the first to go AWOL from the Brevard County base in years.

"We're hoping through the media that Airman Sites will see that his family is very concerned and contact them, and then secondly, that he will contact us," said Ken Warren, a spokesman for the 45th Space Wing.

Sites, a 20-year-old air-traffic controller, has never been deployed overseas and seemed in good spirits in the days leading up to his going Absent Without Leave, Warren said.

Rickie Sites, 55, said he last spoke with his son May 27. "Rick sounded good and seemed happy," he said.

He said his son was planning to be transferred to Whiteman Air Force Base is Missouri around the first of July and was looking forward to a couple of weeks off and being closer to his family.

He was last seen June 7 driving away from the base in a pewter Chevrolet Silverado pickup that he had borrowed from a friend, Air Force investigators said.

The truck has Florida license tag 159 KAM.

Wearing a battle dress uniform or camouflage gear, Sites left behind his drivers license, military identification card, credit cards and other belongings.

Sites' father said he received a call from the truck's owner that night asking if the family had seen or heard from him.

"That was the first we heard of Rick being missing," Rickie Sites said Friday.

Warren said AWOLs are rare at Patrick and that he couldn't remember any in the past decade.

Although Sites could be punished for leaving the Brevard base without permission, officials said they are more concerned about his well-being.

Sites, who arrived at Patrick in February 2005, is described as 5-foot-11, 190 pounds, with brown eyes and hair.

The Air Force is asking anyone with information to call the 45th Security Forces Squadron at 321-494-2000.

"We're hoping he is AWOL," his father said.

"As bad as that sounds, and we don't believe it's true, we're praying that's all it is."