Camper blew whistle after meeting Moore at motorcycle rally in South Dakota

It was just another ordinary weekend for South Dakota’s Brian Lester and his wife, until it wasn’t.

Lester and his wife recently attended the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and were staying at the Glencoe Camp Resort.

There, Lester and his wife — unbeknownst to them — ran into Benjamin Moore, his partner and two children last Sunday. The kids were the subject of an Amber Alert after disappearing from their home in Eastend.

Lester said he was suspicious the moment he was awakened by kids playing outside his campsite because the resort isn’t a spot people would want to bring their children during the rally.

“Glencoe has quite the reputation of being a party campground and there’s usually not a lot of activities or things that you want kids to see or kids to be involved in,” Lester said Friday from Sioux Falls, S.D.

“It’s not really a place for children. It really is kind of an adult-themed campground.”

Lester and his wife were under the impression that it was a 21-and-over campground, so he said they were “appalled” that someone would bring their kids.

Lester decided to take some pictures of the children and take the matter up with resort employees.

However, staff said that since there was no wrongdoing involved, the family could stay for as long as they wished. Lester left his number and asked to have security give him a call.

Lester said he later flagged down a security guard to raise his concerns when another man approached.

“(He) heard the conversation and said, ‘Well, the kids are with me. I’m here working security,’ ” Lester said. “The security guard I was talking to recognized him as one of his co-workers and he’s like, ‘Yeah, he’s here working security with us.’

“I expressed my concerns to the gentleman — who happened to be Benjamin Moore, I believe his name is — and he said, ‘That’s why we chose this area over here in tent camping. It’s less-populated. We know it’s away from the party areas. And they’ll be with their mom the whole time, so we’re making sure that they’re kept sheltered and don’t see the things that we don’t want them to see in Glencoe.’ ”

On Monday, Lester began to notice more unusual activity from the family. For starters, they weren’t staying in an RV or a tent like everyone else, but were simply sleeping in a Chevrolet Equinox.

“The gentleman looked like he was working the nighttime security gigs, so he would come back and sleep in the car and then the female and the kids would vacate the car and play out in the field and play at the picnic tables and play with their toys and stuff,” Lester said.

“The kids never seemed distraught. They were playing like normal eight-, nine-, 10-year-old kids — brother and sister — play on a camping trip. They didn’t have a tent. They didn’t have any lawn chairs. It looked like everything was in the car that they were in.”

Lester could tell something was off and chatted with his wife on Monday about the situation.

“We actually even had the conversation of, ‘What better place to hide children that you’ve abducted (than) in Glencoe?’ ” Lester said.

“If you were a felon or if you were wanting to hide out from law enforcement, how about Glencoe because it’s private property, it’s not patrolled by police, you’re not out on the street, there’s bathrooms, showers, there’s a little convenience store, there’s a restaurant — there’s everything you need to sustain for a week.”

On Tuesday, Lester and his wife packed up and headed home. On Wednesday, they woke up to the Amber Alert about the two children.

“My wife freaked out and she was like, ‘Oh my God, Brian, that’s the kids. The Amber Alert is the kids in our campground,’ ” he said. “I looked over at her phone and I instantly recognized Benjamin Moore as the guy I had talked to that told me he was working security.”

The Lesters called 9-1-1 and reported their story to local authorities, who told them the kids had been located and Moore and his common-law partner had been taken into custody.

Afterwards, Lester says the news was somewhat rattling but he hopes their complaints helped raise red flags.

“It’s almost just a sinking pit in your stomach,” he said. “You’re just like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I should have done more,’ until you can digest the situation and realize you did everything you could and that things work out for a reason.”

A major lesson for Lester is that he says his opinion on Amber Alerts has changed going forward.

“It definitely will make me look at the Amber Alert a little bit closer,” he said, “because how many times do you see an Amber Alert and you’re like, ‘Yeah, I’ll never see these kids. They’re missing from two states away. They’ll never cross paths with me.’ ’’