Missing Person

How many people know your social security number, date of birth and weight? These aren't exactly normal topics of conversation.

I recently learned the police won't look for someone unless you have this information. Let me restate that, they won't look for the person anyway, but they will put them in a national database and they can't enter them in the database without this information. At this moment I'm quite disappointed and frustrated with the system in place for finding someone who is missing.

The police said they could send someone by again to see if she's home, or my other option was to fill out a missing person report. In order to complete the report I had to go down to a certain location at least 30 minutes from my home. A girlfriend accompanied me tonight. When we arrived it was like a scene out of a bad movie. There was one officer behind a desk. He looked bored. He was taking a report from an older man about his daughters cell phone. It took at least an hour. When I sat down in the chair to tell the officer my story, I got the same response - disinterest and apathy.

Approximately a month ago I met a woman in need. She moved here Feb 2005 from New York to be with a man she met on the internet. She was in love. It had been more than a decade since she'd been in love. She left her job, sold her stuff and moved in with this man. She wanted to share her life with him. It didn't work out as planned.

I met her at church. I saw her and inside I thought, "she needs a friend." Little did I know. The first part of the story I found out at our first meeting. We continued to attend church together and I invited her to join me at some single's events. A couple weeks ago she stopped showing up. Her cell phone is disconnected and when I called the house he acted like he had never even heard her name before. I was obviously concerned.

The last time I saw her was March 18. That evening she told me he was abusing her. I wasn't surprised. She had a job when she moved here. He asked her to quit. She did. She had limited, if any, contact with the outside world in the year she had lived in KC. The only other person she knew or spoke to regularly was his daughter, until we met. He is a veteran police officer and worked in the homocide division for 20 years. He had multiple guns in the house and it scared her.

My gut told me something was very wrong when she didn't show up. I tried to shake it off, but I couldn't. I knew she was seeing a counselor. I called the counselor last week. The same day she didn't show up to meet with me (March 22), she had called and canceled a counseling session. As the counselor describes it, she received a distressing phone call, the caller only said she couldn't come and she couldn't talk. I became even more concerned.

The man is saying she moved out. I figured he'd say that. I don't believe it. If she left him, wouldn't she call me or the other people she had met who were there to help her? She had told me multiple times she wanted to move out, but she needed to get a job first. She had applied for a job. She also said she had no interest in returning to New York, she liked KC and would like to build a life here.

I called the police. They stopped by. They got the same response, "no one here by that name."

I don't know where she has gone. I don't know what happened. I don't know where she is and I'm angry. I'm angry with the system, it is not helpful. I'm angry a woman can drop off almost unnoticed. I'm angry I didn't do more when she told me what was going on. I don't know what else to do. What happened to her? Where did she go? How can this happen?

Please pray for her and other women like her.