SPOKANE -- Spokane County Sheriff's detectives are trying to track down a Spokane father who allegedly offered to sell his son on Craigslist for $5,000.

Investigators think the ad is not a hoax and have gotten a search warrant to find the person who posted the ad back in February.

The father identifies himself as a single parent dad by the name of Rick who's ran out of child care options. His posting starts out by saying that “Gavin is a great kid but I can no longer afford to take care of him."

Rick explains his son is four years old and "loves playing with balls but doesn't really like to play with cars and refuses to eat vegetables." Rick goes on to write that "he doesn't fuss very much but when he does he just screams for hours. I usually just put him in the closet until he stops and that usually works."

Officials at the Vanessa Behan Crisis Nursery worry that if the posting is legitimate Rick needs some help.

“If this dad would have called us we could have afforded him some time to think through this, if this was something he was really interested in doing helping him find the resources to get there if he needed to or buy him the time to pull together the resources he needs,” Amy Swanson with the crisis nursery said.

Swanson added that the crisis nursery sees many parents who love their children but because of a lack of resources of nearby relatives find themselves at the breaking point. Rick could be blowing off steam but writes he's ready to stop being Gavin's parent saying, "I don't know what else to do other than find a good family with kids or a couple that wants a son. I just won't give him to anyone."

“When parents are overwhelmed that don't always make choices that are in the best interest of their children or they think it's in the best interest of their children and it turns out not to be and if we can avoid that we want to be here for that reason,” Swanson said.

Detectives may have never known about this posting because it was only up for a short while however a Spokane Valley woman was concerned when she saw it so she copied the ad and sent it to the sheriff’s office.

As you might expect, buying or selling children are felonies.