Air Force Col. Harry Shoup, the operations officer at the Continental Air Defense Command Operations Center, a forerunner of NORAD. On December 24, 1955, he answered a wrong number phone call from a young child in Colorado Springs who was following the directions from a local department store advertisement printed in the local newspaper. According to NORAD spokesman Marco Chouinard, “the youngster wanted to know the whereabouts of Santa Claus.” Shoup answered the first and many following calls and started a tradition that was inherited by NORAD when it was formed in 1958.