David Andreatta

@david_andreatta

Nicholas A. Simmons%2C 20%2C was seen leaving his home on Cider Creek Lane on New Year%27s Day.

Photo taken by RIT graduate Jacquelyn Martin lead family members to Simmons.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. For one local family, it was the answer to a thousand prayers.

Nicholas A. Simmons, a 20-year-old Greece resident who had been missing since New Year's Day, was found in Washington, D.C., on Sunday after a photograph of him serendipitously appeared in the Democrat and Chronicle and intensified an ongoing search by family and police.

The photo was published by USA Today for local editions of Gannett newspapers and was taken by an Associated Press photographer. The picture ran with a story on cold weather sweeping across the country and depicted a purported homeless man identified only as "Nick" wrapped in a blanket and warming himself on a steam grate on the street just blocks from the U.S. Capitol on Saturday.

The Greece Police Department in a statement Sunday said Simmons had been found by Washington police near 6th Street NW and Constitution Avenue NW and was taken to George Washington University Hospital as a precaution.

"Simmons was located after he was photographed in Washington, D.C., by an AP reporter," the statement read in part. "(The) photo ran in the USA Today in an unrelated story and the photo was seen by Simmons' family who recognized him."

The photo had sparked a buzz on social media earlier in the day, as relatives of Simmons expressed a mix of elation, astonishment and determination on a public Facebook page that appears to have since been dismantled.

"Nick is alive and obviously not well," read one post by Simmons' mother, Michelle Simmons, hours before her son was found. "(We) are going to get him home safe and this is by far the greatest example of God's love and divine intervention I have ever experienced."

"I am beyond able to put into words how I am feeling."

Reached at home about an hour before police publicly confirmed Simmons had been found, Michelle Simmons declined to comment, saying that her family would speak out at a later time. After police confirmed Simmons had been found, a woman at the residence said over the telephone that no one from the family was available to comment.

Simmons was last seen leaving his Cider Creek Lane home by car around 5 p.m. Jan. 1, according to Greece police. He was driving a red 1999 Buick Century sedan. It was not immediately clear how Simmons got to Washington or whether he still had possession of his car when he was found.

Associated Press photographer Jacquelyn Martin spotted Simmons in a huddle of homeless men. He wore a ski jacket and was wrapped in a thick gray blanket. She said she was struck by how young he looked.

"I introduced myself and shook his hand and he would only say that his name was 'Nick,'" Martin said in an interview. "I told him that if I could write his whole name in the photo sometimes it could help him connect with family and he said, 'No, I'm OK, but you can just write that my name is Nick.'"

The next day, Martin received a message via Twitter from USA Today reporter Natalie DiBlasio, whose story about the frigid temperatures was illustrated with Martin's photo.

DiBlasio had reached out to Martin after receiving a tweet from Simmons' sister, Hannah Simmons, at 10:50 a.m. that read: "please contact me. you wrote an article for USA today that features a picture of my missing brother."

DiBlasio put Michelle Simmons in touch with Martin, whom would later guide longtime Simmons family friends from Fairfax Station, Va., to the spot outside the Federal Trade Commission building where she had taken the photograph.

The family friends, Peter and Cindy Gugino, and Martin eventually found Simmons, and police later picked him up.

"It's very easy to put people in a box and to forget that these are real people who have families who love them and are worried about them," said Martin, who hails from Syracuse and is coincidentally a 2001 graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology. "An experience like this really reminds you that every person has a story."

By the afternoon, an emotional post on the Simmons Facebook page attributed to his mother stated that family was en route to Washington and read in part:

"GOD took that photo, GOD made us find him . . . it could have been months before we had a lead on his whereabouts. My baby looks so lost and I will be spending the rest of my life making him well."

Simmons was reunited with his father, Paul, and brother, Paul Simmons Jr., at the hospital.

Police, who publicized Simmons' disappearance late last week, said there were no leads in the case until the publication of the photo.

"It was pure dumb luck how all this happened," Greece police Sgt. David Mancuso, the lead investigator, told the Associated Press. "It's truly a miracle."

To comprehend the odds of something like this happening, consider that Simmons' photo had been selected by USA Today from the Associated Press wire, which carries thousands of photos at any given time and often offers news outlets that subscribe to the service several different images of the same event to illustrate news stories.

In this case, the Associated Press wire moved 126 photos depicting frigid conditions from across the country. Three of them were of Simmons, but only in one of them could his face be clearly seen.

DANDREATTA@DemocratandChronicle.com

Twitter.com/david_andreatta