In Trail of the Lost, Lankford documents a form of investigation that relies on technical methods and is described by technical jargon. Her book details a modern, dynamic form of citizen-led search-and-rescue (SAR) that merges professional doctrine with open-source intelligence (OSINT) and online trail culture. Traditional SAR begins by defining a Point Last Seen (PLS) or Last Known Point (LKP) to establish a contained search area. Lankford’s narrative shows these principles in action, defining the PLS as “the last credible sighting of a missing person by human eyes” and the LKP as “the last place where a missing person left behind physical evidence” (106). Lankford’s volunteer team is shown activating these leads by using Facebook groups and trail registers to validate theories and reconstruct timelines.

While new technologies like Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS)—i.e., drones—enhance data collection over large or challenging topographies, it is still a challenge to review the resulting imagery. Requiring manual interpretation, these methods can result in the “faster location of missing objects at the onset, but at the cost of fatigue and loss of interest with time” (Weldon, William T., and Joseph Hupy. “Investigating Methods for Integrating Unmanned Aerial Systems in Search-and-rescue Operations.