Search For A Missing Teen Reveals Everyday Heroes

We live in a city known for its quality of life.  It regularly appears on the "Best Places" lists that publications like Money Magazine and Forbes.  Here's a quote from the Forbes Magazine where it topped their list for Best Places For Business And Careers:

Job growth was a robust 3%, third best in the U.S. It enjoys—by far—the lowest violent crime rate in the U.S. and ranks tenth lowest overall for crime, including property crime. The metro population has doubled over the past two decades to 542,700.

It's nestled in a beautiful valley between mountain ranges.  The educational level is high.  The cost of living is low.  Every morning between 7:30 and 8:30 the streets fill with kids walking, scootering, or riding their bikes to school.  Cars slow down for them and volunteer crossing-guards shepherd them safely across major roads.  People know and watch out for their neighbors.  By way of example our neighborhood has a lot of older people and every autumn the youth of the neighborhood go around and rake up their yards.  We have a big neighborhood party every year with entertainment, a bounce house for the kids, a hay-ride, a dunk-tank, and all the burgers / corn on the cob / ice cream / pie / cotton candy etc. you can eat--all for free because everyone contributes and volunteers.  This metro-area is known by others in the state (sometimes derisively) as "happy valley".

Happy valley was shaken a few days ago with the news that a 14 year old girl had left home for her middle school at 8:30 in the morning but never arrived.  The parents received a call from the school in the afternoon and panic set in.  The local police were called, searches of the neighborhood began and continued into the night. Within minutes social media was abuzz with the news, with recent photos, and with requests to spread the word and keep our eyes open for her.  A call went out for volunteers to join in a wider more thorough search the next morning at 8:00 a.m.

The day dawned cold and rainy mixed with some snow, but when Linda and I got there right about 8:00 we found the parking lot of the local church where we'd been invited to meet as well as the streets around it filled to capacity.  With only a few hours' notice hundreds of people had re-arranged their schedules, dropped what they were doing, and had come to help with the search.  We saw a young pregnant mother with two children in tow.  There were college students, retired people, construction workers, and professionals.  People from every walk of life came together to search for a young missing girl that was a complete stranger to most of them.

Groups of volunteers were quickly organized and given assignments.  Linda's group was sent with missing posters to canvas local businesses.  Using large maps divided into grids others teams got assignments to go house-to-house in their designated blocks of neighborhoods starting from where she was last seen and fanning out all over the city.  I got assigned to a group of 12 people to scour the river trail heading west from that point toward the lake.

There is a river running through Happy Valley to a lake on its western edge.  It wends its way through neighborhoods, business areas, and people's yards.  Along its banks are trees, shrubs, lawns, and tangled patches of dead branches and weeds.  The city has built an asphalt trail for joggers and bikers.  This trail passed very near to the house of the missing girl, and was an area of prime concern because of its many secluded spots where mischief could take place.  The police had searched the area the night before with a helicopter, and with dogs, but now it was daylight and a more thorough search was in order.  The dozen people in my group paired off and agreed to always stay within sight of someone in the group as we fanned out and scoured the river bank, park bathrooms, trash cans and dumpsters.  We proceeded grimly along determined and hopeful but a bit afraid to find her, because the chances of finding her alive anywhere along that wild and exposed trail were slim.  Nevertheless everyone was thorough, climbing under bridges, crossing rail-road tracks, helping each other up and down the steep banks to tromp through the tangled copses and brush along the river.  My partner was a young African-American Army veteran who served in Afganistan in 2003.  We stayed together and pulled each other up the steep banks.  There was a husband and wife searching together, a young man who had just been accepted to medical school in Virginia partnered with an older retired man.  A thirty-something hispanic  man was joined by a middle-aged man who had been jogging by and decided to join the search.

At one point, not far from the girl's home the trail widened out into a park and we fanned out to search it thoroughly.  After finding nothing we regrouped and prepared to continue.  A young polynesian woman from Hawaii that was in our group suggested that we pray together.  Everyone removed their hats, bowed their heads in the cold drizzle, and she prayed for the girl's safety and our success in completing our assignment.  Then we moved on into a less populated wilder part of the trail.  I began to be concerned with the number of trash cans on the curbs and the fact that it was garbage day for her neighborhood.  I was worried that her small body could have been dumped in a trash can and wondered if the sanitation department had been alerted to watch as they emptied the bins.  I phoned our search leader back at the search headquarters to share my concern.  Before I could explain he asked me to hold for a moment.  When he came back on the line he told me that the police had just informed him that she had been found and that we should return.  We were elated!  Our return trip along the trail was just as exuberant and light-hearted as the outbound trip had been grim.   We talked and laughed and asked about each other's lives.

We got back to the search headquarters in time to hear the end of the debriefing by the police.  It turned out she was safe and there had been no abductor. Rather than going to school she apparently rode her bike to a nearby city and spent the night at a church building there. Cold and hungry she finally went to a home this morning and asked to use their phone and called her mother. We don't know what her motives were but everyone was so grateful she is alive and well. I didn't hear a single word of complaint about having been called out to an unnecessary search.  I was delighted and amazed at the response of the community.  The policeman that debriefed us wound up by saying that if he ever went missing he hoped it would happen in this community because so many people care.

I have lived in scary crime-ridden neighborhoods.  I have known people from all walks of life.  After decades of living and observing I have concluded that our communities are what we collectively make them.  Have you ever met a real-life hero?  I was in the presence of hundreds of them yesterday!  These were ordinary people who made themselves extraordinary because of their concern for and service to each other.  Our everyday acts of mutual civility are the glue that holds our civilization together.  There are many reasons to be jaded about our future, and to be too frightened or apathetic to engage in reaching out to each other, but in the end of the day we are really all one family--charged by God to care for each other.

Thank you to all the everyday heroes I met yesterday, and to the millions of others across the world who heed the better angels of their natures!