CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Miles before you enter Corpus Christi city limits, you see him. Catch in hand -- 21-year-old college student Caleb Harris on a billboard -- a missing person.
For more than two-and-a-half months, thousands of volunteers and law enforcement officers have searched for the Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi junior whose disappearance still cannot be explained.
"Missing without a trace," Corpus Christi Police Department Assistant Chief Todd Green said.
Green has been with the police department for almost 40 years. He said he knew something was seriously wrong from the day Caleb went missing.
"Do you still have that feeling today that something bad probably did happen?" KHOU 11 reporter Matt Dougherty asked him.
"Yeah, we do," Green said. "We do."
Caleb's disappearance
The case begins in the foggy, early-morning hours of March 4 at an apartment complex not far from the university’s campus. One of Caleb’s roommates had just brought home a puppy.
Green provided a timeline of events.
"At about 12:56 Monday morning, March 4, Caleb, one of his roommates, and a mutual friend go out in the parking lot to walk the dog," Green said. "hey trigger a doorbell camera on a nearby apartment."
The Ring camera video footage is some of the last known images of Caleb.
Not long after the three are seen in the video, the friend leaves and the roommate goes to spend the night at his girlfriend’s house.
"Now, it’s just Caleb and one of his roommates," Green said. "At about 2:20 in the morning, the second roommate tells Caleb, 'Hey, I’m going to bed, I’ve got class in the morning.'"
Then, Caleb told the roommate he was staying up to order his lunch for the next day from Uber Eats.
"Caleb had a habit of calling Uber Eats and he would order his lunch for the following day," Green said.
The Uber Eats order Caleb makes consists of two Lunchables, a Red Bull and an apple pie.
"At about 2:44 a.m. Caleb shares a short Snapchat video of him apparently walking the dog again in the parking lot of the complex," Green said. "He shares that with his sister, who lives in New Braunfels."
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This time, Caleb’s movements didn't trigger the Ring camera. Investigators think Caleb then took the dog back into the apartment.
"At 3:03 a.m., he shares a second Snapchat photo of a small bridge just outside the entrance to his apartment complex," Green said. "It’s a real small bridge. He shares that photo with a friend of his from high school, again, that lives in San Antonio."
Police said the photo included a caption of an inside joke between Caleb and his friend.
"At about 3:12 in the morning, his phone ... makes its last communication location with a cell phone tower," Green said. "After that, we have no further communication from his cell phone."
The security cameras at the apartment complex weren’t working that morning and Harris was never seen or heard from again.
At 11 a.m., his roommate notices Caleb’s Uber Eats order on the doorstep of the apartment. He also saw Caleb’s keys and wallet on the kitchen counter and Caleb’s truck in the parking lot.
"He knew Caleb had class that morning, so he finds that odd and he and the other roommate start trying to find out where he was," Green said.
He was unsuccessful.
"At about 1:50 in the afternoon, they call the Corpus Christi Police Department and one of our patrol officers responds," Green said. "They tell the officer everything they knew."
The search begins
Local hospitals were checked for John Does, and almost immediately, the ground search for Caleb began. In the days and weeks that followed, the search got bigger and bigger.
Assisting the police department in the search for Caleb is an exhaustive list of other law enforcement agencies:
The Nueces County Sheriff’s Office, the Texas Rangers, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Marshals, FBI and the Secret Service all send resources to help with the search.
"The involvement of the feds is just to assist because they have more resources, or is it because they believe a federal crime could have been committed?" Dougherty asked Green.
"Both," Green replied.
"It’s just hard," Caleb’s father, Randy Harris, said. "It’s a parent’s worst nightmare for sure."
KHOU 11 photojournalist Ryan Phillips and Dougherty traveled to New Braunfels to meet with Randy Harris.
He's spent countless days and nights looking for his only son. Every week, he continues to make the trip to Corpus Christi sometimes searching with his brother-in-law and father-in-law -- other times conducting surveillance on his own.
"You just don’t know," Harris said. "There are things out there where they are looking for younger men like that."
Randy Harris meets with detectives on each weekly trip, often returning home to the Hill Country without any new information.
"We know that they’re doing their investigation and there’s things that they just can’t tell us," Harris said. "We would love to know more. Do we have suspects? Do we have any information? And we just don’t have that yet."
According to Green, there is information detectives have not made public out of concern its release could hinder the investigation.
"We don’t have any one single piece of evidence that points to what happened to him," Green said. "We have evidence, that when you put it all together, that suggests that there was potentially some foul play involved."
He said the team of local, state and federal authorities continues to meet on Caleb’s case at least twice weekly. In addition to the hundreds of warrants and preservation requests they continue to submit and the dozens of interviews they’re conducting, Green said police are still following up on tips from the public.
"Some of them are from psychics who have visions," Green said. "But there have been some of them that have had some good information, and we’ve gone out and followed up on them."
How to help
Other calls to a tip line created by volunteers often go straight to Randy Harris.
"I get calls all hours of the night," Harris said. "And those are hard, too, because most of the time, it is somebody drunk. And it’s heart-wrenching because if it’s something, you’ve got to go chase it."
The search for Caleb has become Randy Harris’ second full-time job. Even though his family has been broken by his son’s disappearance, the dad said they’re still holding onto their faith. Right now, it’s all they’ve got.
"If it’s raining or whatever, my wife and I are both like, ‘God, is he getting shelter? Is he getting fed? Is he being taken care of?'" Randy Harris said. "Those are the things that run through our minds. But then we’ve got to go back to prayer and ask God to watch over him. That’s all we can do."
Investigators said they are getting closer and hoping data requested from cell phone and tech companies will lead them to a person who knows what happened to Caleb.
Caleb’s friends, roommates and the woman who delivered the Uber Eats order have taken polygraph tests and have been cleared by investigators.
If you have any information or think you may have seen Caleb, Randy Harris is asking that you call 911. You can also call the family’s tip line at 361-826-2950. There's a $50,000 reward offered for information leading to Caleb’s safe return.
The family also created a GoFundMe account to help fund the search efforts.