It could have been a day for celebration.

Amid reports of war, crime and unemployment, finding young Falcon Heene safe and unharmed made even hardened law enforcement officers cheer. Thankfully, we all learned within a few hours after the silvery balloon first appeared on national news channels, the 6-year-old Colorado boy was never in the sky.

But it isn't relief the country feels. It's anger, disbelief and cynicism. It's looking more and more like the deputies, the news media and America were duped.

Charges are likely coming against the boy's parents, after mother Mayumi Heene reportedly confessed that they concocted the whole thing. And what was the suspected motive? Reality television.

According to one man who knew the boy's parents, father Richard Heene was hoping to land a lead role in a reality show. On it, the man said, Heene would perform weird, supernatural experiments.

Now that the sympathy has turned against them, the family would no doubt like to see the attention float away like that goofy balloon. But prosecutors should take into account everything that did float away

that day.

Trust, for one. Had this been a real emergency, it would've shown the lengths - and heights - to which people are willing to go to save others they don't even know. Two military helicopters were dispatched to track the homemade weather balloon in which the world thought Falcon Heene was trapped inside. After it landed, law enforcement officials from the surrounding area spread out to search for his body.

Concerned residents called the sheriff with suggestions for daring rescues. But no one could blame officials if they were less inclined to risk their own personnel the next time a bizarre call comes in.

Valuable public resources vanished into thin air, too. Some reports have estimated the cost of the "balloon boy" search in the millions of dollars. Like Audrey Seiler, the UW-Madison student who falsely claimed she was abducted in 2004, the Heenes should be expected to reimburse much of that if it's proven a fraud.

Teaching a child that a few minutes of fame justifies manipulating the fears of a nation and endangering the very officers sworn to protect him is criminal.