Ever since getting lost in the desert, I pay attention to stories about missing people.

Well, more attention.

I’ve always had an interest in helping to find the lost.

Now? Even more so.

That’s because last year, I joined their ranks.

Here’s the thing. People LOVE to criticize those of us who get lost. They talk about how we were unprepared or deserved what we got. They talk about how we should be charged for “what taxpayers had to pay” in our search and rescue.

Never, however, do they imagine that they or their loved ones could one day be one of the lost.

It doesn’t take much.

A wrong turn while hiking. Alzheimer’s. Dementia. A car accident. A small child who gets out of the house when a parent isn’t looking.

And there you have it.

A lost person.

I can tell you from personal experience that all a lost person wants is to be found.

I hoped and prayed to be found alive. But as death drew ever closer, I prayed simply that my body would be found.

That, I knew, would help my family during their grieving.

Several weeks ago, I decided to drive down to Texas to participate in a boot-camp fundraiser for one of the many groups that helped find me and bring me home.

TEXSAR, which is made up solely of volunteers, is one of the entities that showed up at Big Bend Ranch State Park after I went missing.

Anyway, I decided that I wanted to participate in their fundraiser Saturday.

Which, as it turned out, fell on the day after these men and women had had to search for one of their own — a sheriff’s deputy who was swept away in a flash flood.

Her name is Jessica Hollis. She was inspecting low-water crossings to determine whether barricades needed to be set up. She also was a member of a SAR dive team.

If anyone should have survived that flood, she should have.

Her body was found on Friday. TEXSAR’s fundraiser was on Saturday.

I had been following the story of Deputy Hollis. Once you get lost in the wild, you tend to pay attention to stories about other people who run into trouble.

I was crushed when I learned that she had died.

At the same time, thank God SAR teams found her body.

That’s what I prayed for in the desert — that if I wasn’t found alive, that my body would be located so that my family would know what happened.

Members of TEXSAR, I know how much you wanted to find that deputy alive.

But as someone once lost out there, alone, I can tell you that she would be ever so grateful to know that her body was located. You have given a family what they most needed: answers. And their loved one.

Alone in the Texas desert, I wanted my family to know what had happened to me. I wanted them to have something to bury or cremate.

I wanted to be found. Even if it was too late.

Too often, we look at the missing and criticize them for becoming lost. We forget that any of us might, at one time, lose our way.

Thank God for the volunteers who search for those of us who lose our paths.

Thank God for those who dedicate their time and energy to finding the lost.