For a professional racecar driver, the ultimate goal is to see a checkered flag. But for Ariane Dart, the chief goal is helping a missing child reunite with family. As it happens, she’s done both. A four-time racer with the Fireball Run, an annual event aimed at raising awareness of missing children in America, Dart in 2014 achieved the significant accomplishment of finishing first in a 10-day cross-country auto race. But more important to the Sarasota philanthropist, a little girl named Michele whose face appeared on posters distributed as part of the race managed to end up back in her father’s arms after years of absence. “I don’t know if I had anything to do with it, but this couldn’t have hurt,” Dart says. “Every poster we hand out is one step closer.”

TEAM FIREFLY ANNA NEKORANEC AND BENGT NIEBUHR WITH 1958 MERCEDES 300 D.

For the uninitiated, the Fireball Run each year brings together dozens of teams to race from city to city, solving brain-teasing puzzles along the way while also publicizing individual children whose faces are emblazoned on the cars, the official website and any periphery material put in the public square over the course of the contest. Hundreds of children have been represented in the race over nine years, and some 45 of those children have come back home alive.

TEAM KIRK’S ANGELS ARIANE DART WITH MCLAREN 650S.

This year, five teams with ties to the Gulf Coast participated in the 2015 Fireball Run; Dart this year came in second but was most excited that three more children represented in the race were found amid the publicity. Superfans had the chance to watch livestreams online of the race, and editors right now are cutting together a 13-episode run to be released on Netflix next year. Dubbed this year as the Space Race, the race featured four teams with astronauts, not to mention such celebrities as Happy Gilmore actor Chris MacDonald and Queen of Versailles documentary subject Jacqueline Siegel. But we turned our focus on the cars carrying our hometown heroes.

FROM TEAM HOPE & GLORY JOHN AND STEVE MURRAY WITH BENTLEY GTC.

Team Bronco
Richard and Bibi Ohlsson
Pole Position: No. 81
Finished: 22nd Place
Representing: Wendy Hudakoc, Naples 

Bibi Ohlsson makes no qualms about her top goal with the race. “Most of all, I would like to bring Wendy Hudokoc back to her family.” Like many of the represented children, Wendy is a runaway; she snuck out of her family’s Naples home in 1998 when she was 14. If the girl is still alive today, Ohlsson hopes she knows it’s never to late to come back to her family. In the meantime, this Sarasota couple is spending much of their own money publicizing the girl both in the area of the race and in the Canada community she lived in before coming to Florida. The Ohlssons, self-confessed philanthropy junkies, hope the race ups attention on the huge number of missing children in the country.

Team Firefly
Bengt Niebuhr and Anna Nekoranec
Pole Position: No. 16
Finished: 7th Place
Representing: Adji Desir, Immokalee

This Venice couple placed a bid at Fort Carrots Family Center’s annual auction at the Firefly Gala and won the chance to represent the organization in the run this year. “It is truly a worthy cause,” says Nekoranec. They represent a little boy who disappeared from his grandmother’s house in an Immokalee migrant camp in 2009. The autistic child was six years old at the time. During a visit with Mayor Willie Shaw publicizing the run, the couple noted how easily a search for a child in a transient community can start, but they hope this race focuses new attention. In terms of race drama, Nekoranec this year ended up spending time in the Kirk’s Angels car filling in as navigator while Leichenberger was out, helping earn points for both that team and her own.

Kirk’s Angels
Ariane Dart and Tracy Suppa Leichtenberger
Pole Position: No. 1
Finished: 2nd Place
Representing: Alexander Erb-Sanchez, Ellenton

The team has a solid track record, finishing in the top five three of four years in the race and winning in 2014. Ariane’s work in philanthropy around Florida led her to the race, and this year she represents Erb-Sanchez for the second year in a row. “It’s heartbreaking,” she says. The child was kidnapped as a baby in 2008. The pair, one of the all-female teams on the road, have become genuine celebrities in the Fireball world. 

Hope and Glory
John and Steve Murray
Pole Position: No. 5
Finished: 25th Place
Representing: Jennifer Marteliz, Tampa

Steve, founder of Steve Murray Homes, thought this trip would be a great adventure with his father John for the older Murray’s 70th birthday and jumped at the chance to participate as one of the CEO-led teams in the race. He runs for a girl who disappeared in 1982 in a suspected kidnapping. Today, she would be around 40 years old. “She’s only a little bit younger than me,” Steve notes, “and she’s been gone since 1982. It’s frightening.”focuses new attention.

Team Honey Buns
Ted Smoot and Greg Sidwell
Pole Position: No. 22
Finished: 41st Place
Representing Briana Conklin

Smoot, a Lakewood Ranch software executive, runs with Palm Harbor pal Greg in their second race together. The pair originally got in for the adrenaline rush, but Smoot said he quickly realized the good to be done when he ran his first Run in 2012. He likes the scavenger hunt-meets-high-performance vehicle race mix, but most appreciates the hype generated. “In 2012, we collectively distributed 125,000 missing child fliers, and everyone of us was interviewed by some sort of media,” he says. “When it was all put together later, they told us that if that was paid media exposure, it could have cost over $40 million. He races this year for a child abucted from Hallandale Beach, allegedly by her mother, in 2008. The child at the time was three years old. Not pictured