An 80-year-old Southampton County man reported missing last Thursday was found Saturday night, cold and confused, in the furthest reaches of Mathews County—at the end of Bavon Beach Road.

Major J.T. Williams of the Mathews County Sheriff’s Office said his office received a call at around 6 p.m. Saturday from an out-of-town real estate agent who had been in the county earlier that day taking pictures of property in the waterfront community of Bavon Beach, which consists primarily of vacation homes.

The man had taken pictures of a house for sale, in front of which sat an empty truck apparently stuck in a ditch. But it wasn’t until the real estate agent got home and looked at the pictures that he decided to call the county and report the vehicle. The license plate number was clear in the photo, and when Williams ran the number, he got a hit for a man missing from Southampton County.

The real estate agent wasn’t familiar with Mathews County and wasn’t...