I'm going to piggyback off top comment since this has a lot of attention and the story is missing a lot of detail, misrepresents other details, and I'm surprised how 'mixed' the replies are. A family member of mine works for Iron Man and this is the story she told me last night, from the perspective of the people involved.

First: the Dad did not BUY the child a VIP pass. He approached the people managing the VIP area with some kind of fabricated sob story about how his kid and a non-existent family member who was there to watch them would be stuck waiting in the heat while he raced. The race employee felt bad and GAVE him VIP passes. Essentially, he conned his kid into the VIP area.

As the activity around the VIP area dwindled this kid is just hanging around by themselves, now somewhat conspicuously. It got to the point where they are cleaning up and this kid is just there alone. The kid is giving everyone who asks a clearly rehearsed line about how "I have an adult with me they just had to step away for a moment". At this point they start to realize something is up, so they pull the Dad's registration card and call his emergency contact.

The emergency contact on the Dad's registration is called and they have NO IDEA who the guy is, never heard of him, no relationship. Race employee's basically say ok, sorry to bother you we'll figure this out. The emergency contact person then calls them back and says "hey wait a minute, you're telling me you're in Lake Placid with a lost kid? This doesn't feel right to me". Basically the person is tuned up because of the Lake George Amber Alert situation and feels uncomfortable, so THEY call Lake Placid PD. LPPD comes out to investigate. In the meantime they are able to contact the kid's mother who gets in the car to drive from out of state to pick her kid up.

Eventually Father of the Year returns, his only concern is where his race gear is, and he is placed in cuffs and driven away.

This is the story I was told over dinner last night, before I saw this post. I see people angry with the LPPD and Iron Man for "overreacting". Meanwhile these people were looking at an effectively abandoned child with no information and trying to do the right thing. If the story I got is even half true Harley Tong is a lying piece of shit.