we re really rolling. don t have far to go here now. closer to home. reporter: it was mid-afternoon now. mckenzie s mother hadn t heard from her for a while. and suddenly sensed something odd. i had that eerie feeling. the kind you don t entertain as a parent. reporter: her father driving to work tells it, too. something just wasn t right. an hour out of town i turned around, came back. reporter: bobbi expected to hear from mckenzie about 3:00. 3:00 came and went. she busied herself. staid close to the phone and that went on, tick, tick, tick. yes. reporter: when did you start to worry? about 3:15. i started thinking she should be there by now. reporter: bobbi called the billings tower. no one had heard from mckenzie. you try to think the best. she s landed somewhere. she s safe. i ll hear from you, but nothing.
thing in and around billings, montana, since she was born. that is your ticket to what? anywhere i want to go. i fly it through canada. i fly it to mexico. you know, you get to see things that a lot of times, that other people never going to get to see. reporter: so when the girl showed up in flight school in nearby laurel in august 2013 brimming with confidence, bobbi jumped right in. she could see right away mckenzie was a natural. like when she put her in frosted goggles and asked to fly by instruments only. i put her in situation where is she couldn t see out the window and i d say, mckenzie, where s the airport? and she d shock me. because she could point. holy smokes. reporter: so when the time came for mckenzie to fly solo, bobbi didn t worry. how did she do in that first solo flight?
could have put off the test but decided not to. because the weather was good. the winds aren t too strong. all of the conditions, you know, you want to make sure there good. yeah. we checked that very closely. reporter: so bobbi and mckenzie plotted a modified trip with stops at little airports over the state line in wyoming. around 10:00 a.m., checks complete, mckenzie climbed into the cockpit. i wanted to give her a hug in the worst way. and then i thought, nah. i ll give her a hug on the day we finish all of this, because she s going to go, oh, syrupy old people. but i was confident. totally confident. reporter: 30 minutes in, mckenzie texted bobbi, first leg, complete, from wyoming. how that go? that went well. she was headed to cody. reporter: cody, wyoming. after about 25 minutes, land landed there, texting bobbi and her mother, all is well. then a second little push from
of it that, you know, it s like finding a needle in a haystack in there. reporter: by 8:00 p.m., mckenzie was five hours over due. the rescue pilots were tired and running out of fuel and daylight. and then the authorities call. we have passed long the search and rescue process to the air force at this time. reporter: the military would take over. the man said, we d send out a team in the morning and in 30 minutes, bobbi and her friends would be ordered out of the air. bobbi had one last area to search. shell canyon, in the big horn mountain. rough, rugged, horrid terrain. out of all the wrong ways she could have gone, it would have been the worst. reporter: she combed shell canyon back and forth in the growing dark. nothing. and all that time i kept thinking, why didn t i give her that hug?
he said, we found your daughter and she s she s alive. and then i lost service with him. or it broke out and i said, all right. get your stuff, we re going to cody. reporter: mckenzie s flight instructor bobbi was at that moment about to give up and turn towards home. heartbroken, when on her radio she heard something rather terrifying. i heard one of my friends say, has anybody let bobbi know yet? i m like oh, my god. reporter: let bobbi know what? and i said, i m on. what s going on? and they said, they found her. she s safe. what a relief. i just started crying. reporter: bobbi, too, headed straight to cody. i couldn t get there fast enough. reporter: mckenzie s uncle and grandfather flew there, too. that was the best moment we could have had. that she was found. and healthy. reporter: mary mayer took this photograph.