6-Year-Old Balloon Boy Falcon Heene Found Safe at Home

Falcon Heene, the 6-year-old kid who earned the nickname "Balloon Boy" when news outlets reported that he was stuck in a runaway helium balloon over Denver, Colorado, has been found safe at home. He was not in the balloon and had been hiding out at his house.

Channel 7 news in Denver quotes Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden as saying, "He's at the house and he's fine." He was hiding in a cardboard box in the attic above the family's garage.

Authorities spent more than four hours searching for Falcon, who was thought to be in the helium balloon that crashed at 1:35 p.m. local time in Weld County, Colorado, but when rescue personnel got to the balloon, which had traveled about 50 miles, he was not inside.

All the cable news channels broke into their regularly scheduled programming to offer live coverage of the balloon sailing through the air, with anchors breathlessly speculating on what might happen to the boy inside.

Falcon is the youngest son of Richard and Mayumi Heene, a family described as obsessed with weather and science experiments. The family has appeared on the ABC show Wife Swap and frequently appears in videos chasing storms. On Wife Swap, the Heenes were accused of "chaotic parenting." But on Thursday, the chaos was on cable news, while Falcon was at home all along.

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