Moved by reports of a 2-year-old boy missing in the Tennessee woods, James Holt left his Athens home to try to help in the search.

For days, Athens resident and business owner James Holt had been following reports of the 2-year-old Tennessee boy lost during a hike in the woods behind his grandparents’ home.

“I had been reading about it on Facebook for a few days and I was hoping he would be found,” said James Holt, 33, owner of A1 Tree Service and coordinator of BamaCarry, a gun rights and gun education organization. “It’s a very, very, very sad situation.”

Despite a massive search, the toddler has been missing from Pinson — a small, unincorporated community in southern Tennessee — since the afternoon of Jan. 14.

When, on Monday night, little Noah Chamberlain still hadn’t been found and meteorologists were predicting frigid weather for the area, Holt made a decision.

“I couldn’t stand a child being out there alive in that cold, so I decided to go up there,” he said. “I headed out there from Athens and arrived at 2 o’clock in the morning.”

(The trip from Athens to Pinson is 3 hours.)

About 3 a.m., however, the last busload of volunteers was returning from searching the rough terrain, and Chester County Sheriff Blair Weaver decided the weather was too dangerous for volunteers to be allowed back in the woods.

So, Holt decided to stay on through much of Tuesday and do odd jobs at Pinson Baptist Church, which is helping feed the hundreds of volunteers who have converged on the city to search for the boy.

“I helped replace lightbulbs and helped replace a toilet and did whatever needed to be done before the 4 p.m. press conference at the church,” Holt said Wednesday. About 100 National Guard soldiers who had responded for the search also helped at the church by mopping all of the floors, he said.

“I met a lot of good people,” Holt said.

The search for the boy continued late Wednesday afternoon. Sheriff Blair Weaver was not available for comment on the status of the search.