So this is a Crack House

It's Wild Ride Wednesday. Here's another excerpt from the journey that is our life.

We gathered early on a Saturday morning in the parking lot of The Bridge Evangelical Church in Fresno, California. I was hoping there’d be more people, but I was grateful for the dozen or so friends who showed up at 6am—ready to canvas the city with “Missing Child” posters.

My 15-year-old drug-addicted daughter had been missing for nearly two weeks.

A stranger had watched me staple one of the posters to a telephone poll outside her front window, and she felt compelled to help. Her name was Sonja, and it turned out she was connected to the Federal Marshall’s office. She, along with her husband, spearheaded and organized the poster party.

A giant map of Fresno was spread open on the trunk of Sonja’s car. Red lines divided the map into a grid. She gave instructions to the sleepy, but supportive group of volunteers.

We broke up into groups of two or three, armed with a map, a staple gun, and a stack of posters. I thanked everyone for sacrificing a few extra hours of sleep, and we piled into our cars and fanned out across the city.

We walked and stapled, and stapled and walked. We showed Gia’s picture to everyone we saw and asked them to please call if they had any information that might bring our little girl home.

A couple of hours later my cell phone rang. One of the volunteers (and a dear friend) said he was standing with an apartment manager who swore Giana had been staying in one of her apartments, and had been seen several times over the past week.

The manager wanted to talk to me. She told me the residents had up and left the apartment the day before. She’d allow me to search the abandoned unit, but I was not to bring the police.

Sonja and her husband had some experience with sifting through evidence, so I asked them to accompany me to the complex. The manager agreed to let all three of us into the filthy apartment located in the old Mayfair District of Fresno.

An older lady with dyed black hair greeted us. She had nicotine stained fingernails, and a deep, throaty voice. She was wearing an ill-fitting pastel dress and house slippers.

She identified a picture of our car as the one the young woman was seen driving. She told us the girl was tall and blond, but was wearing a black wig. The woman knew the girl was young, but had learned to not ask too many questions. Besides, a man was always hovering and rarely left the girl’s side.

She slipped the key in the lock, turned the knob, and opened the weathered door.

As soon as the door swung open a strong stench of filth and rotting food swept over me. A waist-high mountain of discarded furniture, clothing, and trash stretched from one end of the apartment to the other. A narrow path was carved through the garbage and leading straight to the kitchen. A slightly narrower path led to the bathroom.

So this is a crack house.

So many emotions washed over me—fear, sadness, disgust, guilt, and anger. I did a cursory walk-through. I saw discarded boxes of hair dye and half-used bottles of shampoo on the bathroom counter. A urine-stained mattress sat alone in the middle of the bedroom—without a frame or coverings. I looked up to see a hole cut in the ceiling—a crude hiding place for drugs.

The electricity had been cut off to the small unit weeks earlier. Dirty, rotting dishes filled the kitchen sink and stovetop. A lone tub of mold-covered cottage cheese sat in the refrigerator.

I sat on top of the mountain of trash and began sifting through the garbage. I was looking for any evidence that my daughter had been there and where she might be headed next.

I found a small note that said, “There are pictures of her everywhere”. Had someone seen the posters we’d put up all over town? I sifted through drug paraphernalia, discarded personal hygiene products, papers, car parts, broken dishes, and pieces of glass and metal.

I put my face in my hands and cried uncontrollably for several minutes. I was overwhelmed with the realization that someone’s daughter had been living in this hell. Even if it wasn’t Giana, it was somebody’s baby.

“Oh God”, I prayed, “whoever the girl is, please help her and bring her home to her family.”

I never found anything that proved inconclusively that it was Gia who’d been living in the squalor. In fact, when we finally got her home we learned that she’d never been to that complex or that apartment.

I still think about the young girl I never met that day. She was a stranger, but she was a mother’s daughter. I’ve prayed for that drug-addicted stranger many times over the years.

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Of Course I'll Call!

It might surprise anyone (except my family) to learn that I suffer from a serious phobia. I am terrified of making phone calls! That is not an overstatement. I am TERRIFIED of making phone calls. I will talk on the phone if you call me, but I actually get sick to my stomach and experience a mini panic attack in the moments just before dialing a phone to “reach out and touch someone”, as the Ma Bell commercials used to say. I talked with a therapist once about this issue. She said the phone fear is about rejection. Yep! I’d have to agree.

So, given my deep-seated fear of Alexander Bell’s most famous invention, what motivated me to (without hesitation) pick up the phone to call a perfect stranger? Simple. Her child is missing.

My friend Liz called me earlier today and asked me if I would call a desperate mom whose 14 year-old daughter has been missing for six weeks. Liz knew I might be able to offer encouragement and insight, because 5 ½ years ago, I was in that woman’s shoes. Before I contacted the distraught mom, I called Giana. She had been that runaway little girl, and I needed her perspective and wisdom. She was wonderful. She said, “Tell the girl’s mom that her daughter wants to come home, but something bigger than herself is keeping her away.”

I picked up my cell phone and called the number Liz had given me. “Liz told me you’d call. Thank you.” The voice sounded relieved. The missing girl’s mom was doing everything she knew to do to find her child—putting up posters, regular contact with the police, contacting friends and acquaintances, then doing it all again…day after day. There is nothing a parent won’t do to find their missing child! I told her our story and then gave her some ideas that she hadn’t considered. She was so grateful to talk to me. The worst part about being in the midst of a storm is the feeling of aloneness.

I shared Giana’s words with the little girl’s mom. “Your daughter wants to come home.” Mom told me she would “operate with that belief”.

It is against the law for children under the age of 18 to run away in many jurisdictions, but not in California. A 2003 FBI study showed that there were 123,581 arrests for runaway youths in the United States. I know that the numbers are much higher today, due in part to rampant drug use among teen-agers. So many hurting kids and so many hurting families…

I would not wish my experience on any mom or dad! It is our job and desire to protect our kids from harm and pain. Not knowing where my daughter was, and not knowing if she was sick or hurting was heart wrenching. I am, however, so grateful that I can share hope with other mothers who now find themselves in that same dark place.

Today I’m praying for the safe and soon homecoming of another little girl

He Showed Me The Way I Should Go

On the evening of October 3, 2004 around 75 friends and family members gathered in Fresno on the southwest corner of Blackstone and Shaw avenues to hold a prayer vigil for a missing 16-year old girl. 

I’d seen these vigils on the news many times before – friends holding pictures of a smiling face, Mom crying as she begs for information or help, candles lighting up the dark night, and volunteers passing out flyers to anyone who would take one. But this time, I wasn’t watching the scene unfold on the 6:00 news, the face on the flyer belonged to my daughter, and I was the crying mom.

Giana—we call her Gia—had been missing for 2 ½ weeks, but for me it felt like a year! I hadn’t slept, I’d barely eaten, and I’d cried more than my weight in tears. Although I couldn’t stop working, I’d still managed to canvas most of the city with “Missing Child” flyers. My little girl’s bright smile and big blue eyes jumped off the page, and in the bottom left-hand corner was a picture of the person she’d last been seen with—an older married man with children of his own. I’ll call him “Guy”.

A 17 year-old girlfriend of Gia’s had disappeared from her college dorm on the same night, and though the girls had been seen together in the first two days of this ordeal, the friend had turned up safe and sound in Stockton on the fourth day. When her mom called me to report the good news, I wanted to know what she could tell us about Gia, but the teen offered very little information.

My husband Tom and I had watched our daughter slip further and further from us and deeper and deeper into the dark world of drug addiction. We’d gone through this with her older brother and we couldn’t believe we were in this darkness with another one of our children. Their drug of choice was Meth, and like thousands of other San Joaquin Valley teens, they were loosing their lives and souls to the insidious drug. The more we learned, the better they got at hiding the truth. We’d had no choice but to evict our son from our home and onto the streets, and now I feared we’d lost our daughter.

That night, at the vigil, I personally thanked each person for showing up and helping out. They took turns handing flyers to the passing motorists and talking with the people who stopped to get more information. We sang songs and prayed for our daughter’s safe return. As I was chatting with someone, a tiny young woman walked up behind me, and in a barely audible voice she said, “Liz?” “Yes”, I replied. “I’m Guy’s wife.” Though I’d never met her, I’d talked with her on the phone. At times she’d been angry—with me, with her husband and with our daughter. Other times she would cry with worry, as she had young children and now an uncertain future. I hugged her. I asked her if we could pray for her, and in a small voice she said, “I guess so”. I gathered the 75 people together, and a pastor friend of mine prayed for Guy’s wife, his children, and for Guy and Gia. The scared young mom stayed that evening and I’ll never forget watching her little girl hand out flyers and talking to people. “Have you seen my daddy?” she’d ask the passers-by. “We’re looking for my daddy.”

I went home that night, curled up on the couch and cried. “She’s not here”, I told my husband. “Gia's not in Fresno anymore.” “We’ll find her”, Tom assured me. I told Tom I thought she might have gone to Santa Cruz (she’d taken the family car the night she disappeared), but Tom knew she didn’t have any money and couldn’t imagine that she’d left town.

The next morning we did what we’d done every morning since our daughter went missing, we called the cell phone company to see if Gia had used her phone. The answer had always been the same, “No activity.” But today was different. She had used her phone in the wee hours of that morning and had called a phone in Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz! We called the number, but the woman who answered claimed to not know what we were talking about. I got dressed, rented a truck, picked up a friend of mine for support, and took off to Santa Cruz. I had no idea what my plan was—I just knew I had to follow the clue. We’d had other clues, and we’d followed other trails, but they had all ended the same—no Gia. Still, I had to try.

When we got to Santa Cruz, my friend and I talked with police officers and to homeless men and women. We passed out flyers. Our family had spent many a vacation in Santa Cruz, so I drove to all our favorite vacation spots hoping to find Gia, or to catch a glimpse of our car. We walked the Boardwalk, drove around a familiar campground in Soquel, and searched the beaches. There was no sign of my daughter. I checked the homeless shelters and at around 5:30 that evening a police officer told me they tried to get all the homeless people off the streets by 6:00pm. So, he warned, if I hadn’t found Gia by then, I might want to try again the next day.

Meanwhile, back at home, a private investigator was working with the Santa Cruz number Gia had called and was trying to get more information from the woman who belonged to the number. I talked with Tom a couple of times throughout the day and he reported there had been no new information. My last contact with him had been around 4:00.

I was on my way to check out the last shelter for the day when I saw the sign, “Harvey West Park” with an arrow pointing left. I decided to follow the sign—it was now 5:45. I saw another sign and another arrow. I told my friend, “God has put these signs here for me. They will lead me to my daughter.” “Don’t get your hopes up”, she gently warned. When we finally drove into the park, we saw families playing baseball, dogs catching Frisbees, and joggers getting their evening exercise. This did not look like a place where homeless people hung out, but we drove on. It was 5:55. Then, in the last corner of the park, in the last parking spot, I saw it—our car! Sitting on the hood of the car was Gia!

My heart leapt from my chest, and the words shot out of my mouth, “there she is!” I didn’t want Gia to see me, as I was afraid she might run (that’s why I’d rented the truck). My friend grabbed the cell phone, but she was excited and it jumped out of her hands and into the air. It was downright comical as I was reached for the phone mid-air, the silly thing dancing between us! I caught the phone, called 911 and asked the police to come help me secure my child and get her home. I called Tom. “I found her!” I yelled. “I’m looking right at her!” Tom said, “Liz, the private investigator finally got the woman with the phone number to tell us the truth. Gia is with her!” The woman had agreed to keep Gia at Harvey West Park, but only until 6:00. Tom had been trying to call me for over an hour, but service had been spotty and there had been no signal and he hadn’t been able to get a hold of me. God HAD put those signs there to lead me to my daughter!

That was just one of many miracles I’ve seen over the past 5 years. Psalm 143:8 says, Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul. That morning, October 4, 2004 I trusted God to lead me to my lost child, and He showed me the way. God wants to lead you to a miracle today!