Microtel by Wyndham

Investigators believe he spent his first night at a Motel 6 and his second at Smokemont Campground, inside the park on the North Carolina side.

On the night of March 16th, he was at the Microtel Inn in Cherokee, just outside the park's southern entrance.

His roommate, Ryan Molden, had left for work one morning while Derek's alarm was still going off.

Later, a mutual friend told Molden that Derek hadn't shown up for his shift, and Molden called the family.

Enter one Derek Joseph Lueking of Lewisville, Tennessee.

He left the Microtel where he had spent the night in Cherokee, North Carolina at 4:00 AM the morning of Saturday, March 17th, 2012.

Lueking was last observed alone on the hotel surveillance cameras carrying a small backpack.

Derek was 24 years old at the time, and although depressed over the recent loss of his grandfather, was not known to be- His father states that once they gained entrance to the room where Derek had previously spent the night, there was a Bible on the bed and a partially consumed bottle of liquor on the floor.

My husband was moving back to New York and that's where he's from.

So he was moving back with a job and Microtel had talked to the people saying, oh, I'm leaving El Paso.

And they said, oh, there's a Microtel being built in Bethel, Connecticut, which again, I had no idea where that was.

And, but it happened to be only 30 minutes from where we were living.

And they were like, their GMs left and they're trying to open and.

[phone rings] I sent it to shopping malls, homeless shelters, hotels, law enforcement agencies, et cetera, with Laura's picture on it saying, "Anybody know anything about a Laura Simonson?" [weight clanks] Just by sheer luck, some hotel clerk sees this a- alert come over the fax machine.

This is Microtel Inn & Suites by Wyndham.

What was your job at the hotel?

At that point in time, I was just a front desk-

Pussy on a Budget.

[laughs] It sounds like you're staying at a Microtel or something that's-

[laughs] Exactly

...

Yeah.

Sherri, we stayed at the Microtel.

That's right.

[laughs] We stayed at the Microtel.

[laughs]

And then that is the trip.

[laughs]

Microtel or wherever you can stay, you know?

No room service, n- like, we're talking, like, that level of, where it was-

Yeah, where you're trying to watch every dollar, being like, "Oh, man, I can split a r-" When we, when we wrestled, I'd split a room with six dudes.

You do Microtel, 79 bucks, six guys in a room.

The first time I stayed in a nice hotel, like a decent hotel that had room service, there was food in the hallway, and I remember see- someone had, like, a half-eaten burger, and I was just like, "What?"

What is this? [laughs]