FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. -- A volunteer group that helps find missing airplane wreckages -- including adventurer Steve Fossett's -- was instrumental in locating the Cessna that went down near Sedona in 2006, killing two aboard.

SEE ALSO: Family Members, Friends Find Wreck After Years Of Searching

The search for the single-engine aircraft -- piloted by William Westover, 54, a Phoenix attorney, with 43-year-old Marcy Randolph, a mortgage company employee who was aboard on a sightseeing photo trip -- was long, protracted and frustrating.

But Phil Randolph, the woman's father and president emeritus of Glendale Community College, refused to quit until he found it.

"A cosmic alignment,” said Randolph, describing how the search finally came to fruition. “All these good folks and all this work came together, and we found that plane."

"I was not going to give up on this; no way," Randolph said Friday "I was going to find that plane and my daughter and bring her home, and we did."

The plane had taken off from the Deer Valley Airport in Phoenix.

Randolph's hunt took nearly 1,000 days before searchers located the burned crash site in the Red Rock Secret Mountain Wilderness Area between Oak Creek and Sycamore canyons northwest of Sedona.

He searched by ground and air to get closure, aided by friends, family, volunteers and fellow pilots who gave countless hours of help.

His efforts led him last September to the Missing Aircraft Search Team, or MAST, which in turn came across information that led to the crucial break in the case.

The group of about a dozen volunteers scattered across the country helps in long-unsolved searches for missing aircraft.

Randolph had learned that its members were involved in seeking the wreckage of an airplane flown by business tycoon Fossett.

Fossett made a fortune in the Chicago commodities market and won fame for setting records in gliders, jets, boats and high-tech balloons.

He disappeared in September 2007 while flying a single-engine, two-seat stunt plane from hotel magnate Barron Hilton's ranch southeast of Reno, Nev. The wreckage was found 13 months later.

Randolph credited MAST team leader Chris Killian for the break that led to discovery of Westover's plane.

He said Killian fortuitously discovered that two hikers had filed a report with the U.S. Forest Service of seeing smoke and a small fire deep in Loy Canyon on Sept. 24, 2006 -- the day that Westover's single-engine Cessna 182 disappeared on a sightseeing flight.

Killian interviewed the hikers and Randolph and others were able to pinpoint the site using detailed mapping and aerial photographs.

With that information, Randolph said he was able to hike into the crash site Saturday.

"I really didn't know what it (closure) was or how it felt until I got it," he said in an interview. "But for me to get into the crash site on Saturday and connect all the dots, what we saw down there in the canyon, I don't know how to describe it, this is where (my) daughter perished ..."

While he said he absolutely had "a sense of relief," at the same time Randolph's frustration has not ebbed.

"The bigger story than the recovery of my daughter was how this information (the fire report) that was so critical could not get rolled into the (search and rescue) system," he said.

An immediate rescue effort in all likelihood would not have helped his daughter or Westover, "but what if they hadn't perished immediately?" he added. "My goals are to make it better."

Meanwhile, the original hikers who had filed the fire report trekked into the canyon and located wreckage on Sunday which they reported to authorities. The crash debris had slid beneath some trees and rocks and could not be seen from the air.

On Friday, Coconino County authorities said a national aircraft database matched the serial number from a metal door-plate found at the crash site with the tail number of Westover's plane -- N2700Q.

The Coconino County Medical Examiner's office has yet to positively identify the remains found.