It was summer, so at least the kids were warm. It wasn't until the weather turned chilly in the fall that the people who knew called authorities.
The single dad had been leaving his children in a car while he went to work. He didn't make enough to afford day care, but, without the job, his small family would need public assistance.
"People are faced with really difficult choices," said Kelly Rosenleaf, executive director of Child Care Resources in Missoula, who tells the true story about the Montana father struggling to raise his children alone.
After he was reported, Rosenleaf said, the man quit his job and applied for welfare. He had been on a waiting list for a day care scholarship.
"It's cheaper to send your kid to any university in Montana than to send your kid to child care," Rosenleaf said. "There's all this money there to help the university system. Public education is entirely supported by the public, by tax dollars."
"We think somehow it starts at age 6," she said. "Before that, it's entirely the responsibility of parents." Often maligned as the risky choice of selfish parents, day care plays an integral and frequently misunderstood role in Montana communities.
"It's a family support piece, it's a job support piece, and it's a child brain development piece," said Jamie Palagi, early childhood services bureau chief for the state Department of Public Health and Human Services.
Day care's most obvious benefit is that it allows parents to work. The state's 55,000 working parents earn $2.2 billion annually, money that is pumped into local economies to buy food and fuel, pay rent or mortgages and support other industries.
It also creates jobs, although many of them are low-paying. Some 6,600 Montanans work in child care or early childhood education, an industry that generates $143 million a year, according to state figures.
But day care also has a hidden benefit, researchers say. Toddlers who spend time in quality child care settings develop better social and problem-solving skills and ultimately become more-productive members of society.
Every dollar invested in early childhood development programs, especially for low-income children, saves $3 to $17 in future welfare and criminal justice costs, according to one study. That's a 7 percent to 18 percent annual return.
"The returns are very strong," said Steve Seninger, director of economic research at the University of Montana's Bureau of Business and Economic Research.
"Long term, it's a real benefit."
Still, day care is disparaged by many people, especially when it goes awry.
Last month, a Billings man was accused of molesting two 4-year-old girls who attended an illegal day care in his home. The man, Jerry Lindau, died in jail before he could be arraigned in court.
A few years ago, a Laurel woman went to prison after being convicted of improperly medicating a toddler with Benadryl in her licensed day care. The boy died, and the woman, Sabine Bieber, was sentenced to 40 years behind bars.
Parents place an enormous amount of trust in the people who care for their children, said Laura Berens, who has operated Kountry Kare day care in Shepherd for 24 years.
"It's a friendship and a family," Berens said of the relationship she has with her clients. "It's not just somewhere you drop your kids off."
But not everyone can afford quality child care. It is astonishingly expensive.
Day care for an infant in Montana can run $7,500 a year and, for a toddler, $6,300. The average price for a year's tuition and fees at one of the state's colleges or universities is $5,313.
A single parent in the state can spend almost half her income on child care. For a dual-income household, child care can take up more than 10 percent of the family budget.
"I can see how people making $10 an hour can't afford it, and people making $60 an hour can afford for one person to stay home," said Lisa McFarland, whose daughters go to an unregistered day care in a friend's home.
"It's the people like me in the middle who are in a loselose situation. Either you put your kid in day care, or you don't have the things you need to live on."
McFarland works in the accounting department of a Billings business, and her husband operates the family ranch.
"If it was a perfect world and I could do anything I wanted, I'd stay home and take care of my kids," she said. "Basically, I work for health insurance. Health insurance is extremely expensive if you're buying it yourself."
Jacklyn Prior-Rose stays home with her daughter because it doesn't pencil out for her to go back to work.
The only time the Billings native, who lives at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, has been able to afford day care is when her husband has been on active duty in the U.S. Army. Then their income doubles because of hazard pay.
Prior-Rose was also in the Army until both she and her husband were set to be deployed at the same time. She asked to be discharged so she could stay home with her infant daughter.
Now she is pregnant with the couple's second child and coming to terms with the idea that her career is on hold until their kids are at least old enough to attend school. "There's never going to be a good time" to have children, she said. "We can wait the rest of our lives, and there's never going to be a perfect time."
Like most Americans, Montanans tend to be at the beginning of their careers when they start families. That means their expenses are highest when their incomes are lowest.
Overall, people here don't make a lot of money. Depending on the agency doing the counting, average household incomes in the state range from $43,000 to $55,000 a year.
By one calculation, a couple in Montana would need to make a combined $30 an hour to afford monthly expenses including day care for two children.
Paul Halton, who works for a local farm implement company, and his wife, who works in a dental office, spend $600 a month to put their two boys in day care. "You know, it's a new Chevy truck," Halton said. "It takes a week of work to pay for that."
Even families that can afford full price for quality child care cannot always get it because popular day cares have waiting lists. The Center for Generations day care at St. John's Lutheran Ministries in Billings has 250 families on its waiting list.
"The good places have waiting lists," said Generations director Jessica French. "Then what do you do? You still have to work."
State officials are adamant that children are best served in registered or licensed day cares, but families can be tempted to use under-the-radar providers because they are readily available and cost less.
Misty Thompson took her infant daughter to the Lindau day care for two years because it cost only $13 a day. The market rate for infant day care in Billings is $30 a day.
The market rate is a calculation made by the state to determine how much it will pay for day care scholarships. Three-quarters of day cares charge less than the market rate and one-quarter charge more.
Thompson took her daughter out of the Lindau home a year ago when she began running a home-based business and could care for her herself. She and her husband, who works at a Billings retail store, don't know if the girl, now 3, was abused.
"They came with references," she said. "Yes, they were unlicensed, but when you can't afford ... The reason people go to unlicensed day care is they can't afford it."
It is also difficult to find day care providers who accept children before 7 a.m. or will keep them past 6 p.m. When she took her daughter to the Lindaus, Thompson had a job that started at 4 a.m.
"The extended hours are the bigger push for using an unlicensed program," said Tess Keck, director of community development at District 7 HRDC in Billings. HRDC helps families find affordable, licensed day care and apply for scholarships through the state's Best Beginnings program.
Some 3,152 Montana families, including 705 in Yellowstone County, are in the income-based program, which does not have a waiting list.
A family of four earning less than $2,650 a month qualifies for the program.
With two-thirds of Montana children living in households where all parents work, it makes sense for communities to bear the burden of the cost of day care, said Rosenleaf, of Child Care Resources in Missoula.
"We have a schism in our culture," Rosenleaf said. "We believe mommies should stay home with small children and the public becomes responsible for education at age 6. We haven't gotten out of the 1950s."
Some European governments offer tax credits to help parents stay home during the first year of a child's life and then pay for early childhood education beginning in toddlerhood.
Almost 75 percent of American parents supported public funding for child care in a survey conducted recently by the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies.