It started as a cool thing to do with buddies.
Adventures With Purpose started in July of 2018.
Jared Leisek and his buddies dive in rivers with the purpose of removing debris, but when the guys started pulling cars out, they soon discovered that they could help others find missing loved ones.
Started with small things
He started in Oregon, pulling out Phones, sunglasses, scrap metal, garbage, and whatever they could find.
Leisek would then post their dives on YouTube and it took off from there.
Jared recruited his friends to help him pull cars out as vehicles would leak their fluids and eventually damage or pollute the waterways.
The boys invested in the necessary equipment to make their work easier.
Cars are about a ton or so, and when submerged, weigh so much more.
Then in 2019, the group began searching for lost cases.
A family asking for help
Nathan Ashby went missing in July of 2019. The 22-year-old’s family reached out to Leisek when they saw the possibilities of what they could do.
“Families [of missing people] saw what it is that we were capable of,” Leisek said. “We can go out. We can search. We can find. We can float, and we can recover these vehicles. ‘We have a lost loved one. Jared, do you think that you and your organization can come help us out?’”
Identifying the truck
Nathan’s truck was detected at the bottom of a Missouri river by sonar equipment but investigators couldn’t get in the water due to the strong current and depth. That’s where Leisek and his friends came in.
“I turned to Sam [Ginn], who’s my main dive partner and buddy, and I said, ‘Sam, are you up for taking a 32-hour trip to Warrenton, Missouri?’” Leisek said.
They were in the water by 9 am, and by 6 pm had Ashby and the truck on dry land.
Not just another car
It was in Oregon when the group had their deepest find to date.
This was after COVID lockdown, and the group came back for another dive. It was a good thing they did.
Leisek thought it was just another car. They had cameras on as they were streaming live but they had to stop filming when Leisek found a body inside. He began screaming for the cops.
“This is Timothy Robinson, who went missing 12 years earlier and left a note that said, ‘I’m going to the river to a boat ramp, and I am taking myself out.’ And here we are, 12 years later. We now have been able to give that family answers,’” Leisek said.
Leisek, Ginn, and Doug Bishop began to focus their energy on solving cases and finding missing loved ones.
A Montana woman name Tammy Goff had been missing for three years. Her husband, Bob, contacted the group so they could go search where Tammy’s dog was discovered.
Bob and Tammy were high school sweethearts who had been married for 42 years.
Getting closure
Leisek and his buddies drove to Montana to help out Bob.
Tammy suffered from mental health issues and Bob was concerned about how his wife would be portrayed. But Adventures With Purpose were determined to find her.
It was a 4-part series on YouTube, and after 4 hours of searching, they found Tammy’s truck at the bottom of the river.
They dove down, ripped out the license plate and handed it to Bob.
“The moment alongside the river, when I’d seen the license plate, knew that it was her truck and that they told me that she was inside, it was just this whole two and a half years of load that just fell off of my shoulders,” Bob said.
Bob sank down, grieving and crying, as the 3 divers consoled the man who now knew what happened to the woman he loved. Leisek and his friends don’t ask for payments. They rely on donations and YouTube.
And yet Jared, Sam, and Doug are doing the near impossible. Solving missing persons cases that have gone cold for weeks, months, and even years.
See how the divers do their missions in the video below.
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