McNair High student, 14, disappears
I wanted to post the story of the disappearance and home coming of my niece. She went missing on her way home from school on April 30th 2010. She is
14 and she lives with her grandmother, my mother-in-law. She was suppose to be home around 3:00 and by 3:30 they knew something was wrong. It wasn't
like her to not be home from school on time. I found out about it around 5:00. The police were notified and it was decided right away that she was a
runaway without any real evidence to say so.
Since this happened in California and I live in Oregon, I had to wait until the following morning before I had the money to drive down. My wife and I
left with our kids around 10am. My MIL was completely beside herself by now. My wife spend most of the car ride down on the phone with the media and
the police. The police were still treating it as a runaway. The media weren't willing to do anything either because runaways don't make good
stories. The police said to my wife, "Do you think she is the only missing kid?"
When we arrived on Saturday, family and friends were already passing out flyers all over the neighborhood. My mother, whom also lives in the area,
took my kids so we could help. We passed out and posted at least 1000 flyers to people around the area. The police were still unhelpful. They kept
asking if she might have runaway. We had been telling them from the beginning that she had plans that weekend and was excited about going to the
movies as well as the swim class she had at school the following Monday. We asked them to look at the video from her school and at the gas station
across the street. They said they would have to wait until Monday because some kind of red tape BS.
After it got dark, my brother-in-law and I went with a few friends to search the empty fields and houses around the area. Not everything we did was
legal so I'm not going to talk about it but when you are in that situation, you will do anything. We came up with nothing.
Sunday was much of the same. More flyers and lots of people worried. A friend of the family had a trained search and rescue dog that found nothing in
the fields around the school. Sunday night we searched again. It was hard to not look for a body but it comes to mind often. The police were following
us around at night. Instead of spending any time actually looking for her, they were eying the family. We didn't care.
Monday came and when she didn't show up for school, the police finally decided that she hadn't just run off for the weekend. We'd been telling them
that all along. We know her much better than they do. Now the media were interested in the story because it made for a better read. Her picture was
finally on the 5 o'clock news, 3 days too late. The detective came over and gave us the same BS they had been saying. They had nothing.
Some people had organized a search party. About 30 people showed up to help look in the fields again. They found nothing also.
After that was over with we were sitting in the garage just winding down for the night when the phone ran. It was about 10pm. My niece had called a
family friend and he called us with the number she had called from. I looked it up and found out the city it was located in. My MIL was on the phone
and the police said it was a payphone. I know the town, it is about 30 minutes away and it only had one payphone. I took a family friend that was
there and we left. Another family member that lived in a different city that was closer to my niece also left.
When we got there, the cashier at the store had said he saw her about an hour ago. He said he didn't know if she got into a car. He said that a cop
had stopped there but had left already. I started driving around the town looking for anything walking around. I asked a couple girls and they said
they saw her at the store. By that time I had already had a feeling that she was inside a house and I had already had a feeling I knew were it was. I
kept driving around the one street because I felt she was there. By that time my brother in law had made it into town. We joined up and started going
house to house. I was putting the trucks headlights right onto the doors of any house with lights on inside and he was knocking. I started back at the
houses I had feelings about first.
We found her. I can't go into detail of exactly how we found her but she had been at one of the houses that I had a feeling about. The police were no
where to be found. It had been two hours from the time she called until the time we found her and I did not see one police officer. We took her and
drove her home. The first time I had seen a cop was when we got back to the house. They were waiting. My BIL shook one of the officers hand and said
"Thanks for the tip." I laughed as the cop looked confused.
If it wasn't for us, she might not have ever been found. The police didn't do anything. In fact , they dropped the ball in my opinion. Of course
they took credit for it in the news paper though. I now wish I had called the news paper back and told them how much the police fumbled this whole
thing but I just didn't care at the time.
Missing girl located in Thornton
[edit on 6-5-2010 by janon]