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Leslie Schneider's reunion with her father began when a hiker found a skull. Then sheriff's deputies found her father's baseball cap.

Soon Schneider joined in the search, too, flying to Utah last month to help dig for the remains of her father, who disappeared 5½ years earlier. She found a leg bone. Her son found one of his grandfather's arms.

"It was probably the most amazing day of my life," the 50-year-old Schneider said.

"We just never believed we would find that much all in that one day," she added.

Kenneth Schneider, 78, was born in Utah but had lived in Seattle for many years, and had worked as a city planner and published six books on the topic. With his health deteriorating, he wanted to see Utah one more time.

On Oct. 3, 2005, Schneider drove his Nissan passenger car down a washed-out road. It got stuck. He left a note on the car saying, "I am walking to the ranch."

It was assumed he meant Dugout Ranch about 8 miles away, but Kenneth Schneider never showed. San Juan County sheriff's deputies and Kenneth Schneider's family searched the area for days before giving up.

"I had gotten used to the idea we would never find him and it would be this open-ended mystery," Leslie Schneider said.

The Schneider family tried to move on by dedicating a park bench to Kenneth Schneider at the family cemetery in Deseret, Utah.

Then about three weeks ago, a hiker found a skull in a canyon 3.1 miles from where Kenneth Schneider abandoned his car. The hiker thought the skull might be Anasazi and took it to a Bureau of Land Management office, said San Juan County Sheriff Rick Eldredge.

An archaeologist realized the skull was recent. A BLM staff member called the sheriff's office. Eldredge said his staff right away suspected it belonged to Kenneth Schneider.

Deputies returned to the area and found a couple more clues. A deputy on April 14 called Leslie Schneider at her home in Bainbridge Island, Wash. Then he emailed her a photograph of a baseball cap deputies found.

The Schneider family recognized the patches on the cap as part of the 50th reunion of U.S. soldiers who participated in the invasion of Okinawa, Japan. Kenneth Schneider was part of the 6th Marine Division at the battle.

The deputy said the sheriff's office planned to return to the canyon the next day to search for more remains. Leslie Schneider asked them to wait. She wanted her family to be there.

The sheriff's staff agreed to wait a day. Leslie Schneider's siblings were unable to make the trip on short notice, but she, her partner, and her 14-year-old son flew to Salt Lake City, then drove 300 miles to San Juan County and followed deputies into the rocky, dirt-filled canyon.

The deputies, Leslie Schneider and her family began searching. Quickly, Leslie Schneider said, her son found an arm bone. A few minutes later, she found a leg bone lying in the dirt among the brush.

When deputies showed her a watch they found, she broke down. She recognized it.

"He only had probably two or three watches in his whole lifetime," Leslie Schneider said, "and they were the same style."

The searchers continued finding bones. Some of Kenneth Schneider's belt was still around the remains of his abdomen. They also found Kenneth Schneider's wallet with his driver license, library card and credit cards still inside.

Eldredge said Kenneth Schneider had walked toward Dugout Ranch but appears to have tried taking a shortcut. What killed him is still a mystery.

Kenneth Schneider suffered from high blood pressure and left medication and a canteen in the car. Eldredge said one possibility is he fell down a steep incline and into the wash where he is presumed to have died.

Water from that wash scattered his remains in the canyon.

Eldredge said because no one was around to witness Kenneth Schneider's death, it had to be treated as though it was a homicide. That meant every find had to be documented, so sheriff's deputies asked the Schneider family to stay back and not touch anything without permission.

"They probably didn't do that 100 percent," Eldredge said, "but for the most part they did."

Leslie Schneider acknowledges some of the excavating was gruesome, especially when her father's skeleton was being dug out of the dirt. When asked why she continued, Leslie Schneider replied: "It just felt like a real privilege; a gift I was never expecting to get."

At one point in the excavation she held her father's skull.

"It was emotional, but it was still kind of hard to connect," Leslie Schneider. "You know it's your father's skull but you couldn't see him in it."

Searchers eventually found about 80 percent of the skeleton, Leslie Schneider said.

The day wasn't over for Schneider, her partner and her son.

They had to return to Salt Lake City to catch a flight home that was departing early the next day.

Leslie Schneider said her siblings still want to visit the canyon, and so does she. She still wants to find her father's jaw bone, hands and feet.

She said her father wanted to be cremated. She wants some of the ashes placed in the cemetery in Deseret. The rest?

"I would like his ashes to go back into that canyon," Leslie Schneider said.

ncarlisle@sltrib.com Twitter: @natecarlisle —

Online • Others lost in Utah

O Go to Utahsright.com for a database of people who have gone missing in the Beehive State. Find video and more photos from the recovery at Leslie Schneider's site: findingdad.shutterfly.com.