What We Learned When My Sister Went Missing

1.) Talk to the police. It's likely they'll treat it as a domestic matter and not be much help, at least at first, but the sooner they're involved, the better. While the local police where my sister disappeared weren't interested in the case, the police in another area were instrumental in the outcome of my sister's case. So push, even if they're resistant. Get them to make a report and enter her name and information into the FBI's National Crime Information Center databases.

2.) Keep a notebook recording everything: everyone you talk to, every clue, everything.

3.) Talk to her friends, as calmly as you can. They may know if this was planned, and they may have heard from her.

4.) Invade her privacy. Look for a note, journal - anything mentioning a plan. Check the computer, including email and any social networking sites she uses.

5.) If she has a cell phone, talk to the service provider. Some have tracking systems. Check the call history for numbers you don't know. You can put these in online reverse lookups to match them with a name. Contact anyone you haven't already contacted.

6.) Find a good, current photo and make up a missing flier. Include anything identifying about your teen, and your phone number with area code. Print shops can help with this. Plaster them everywhere you can think of, even places you think are long shots or hope she would never be.

7.) Contact the National Center For Missing & Exploited Children at their toll free number: 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678). (They have even more detailed and expert advice on this subject in their Just in Case... Runaway online brochure.)

We had a store in a small town, and a neighboring business was a print shop. They created missing fliers for my sister and handed stacks of them out to anyone who wanted them, free of any charge to us. Mom had been put in contact with the Center for Missing & Exploited Children and had a tip number on the fliers.

So many calls came in to the tipline. People wanted to help, but many of the tips obviously weren't her. They'd describe her as having metal capped teeth, or other things we knew she didn't have and would never have. There were sightings on different sides of the state at the same time. Still, we ran down every lead we possibly could, just in case.

Unwittingly, they played on every fear. We spent days following "yellow vw vans" up and down the freeway because someone said they saw her being held against her will, looking really drugged and out of it, by someone in one. And then there was the very kind, well-meaning woman who suspected there was a coven a couple of hours away doing nefarious things to teens and college kids. She had some wild tales and was roaming the highway on foot between a college town south of the state line and where she thought the coven was, on a search of her own.

Because my sister disappeared in a different city, we spent days in the car, following the slenderest of leads, talking to people in neighborhoods around where she vanished. One of her friends talked about a boy they'd met that weekend, and we tracked him down, too. He hadn't seen her.

Somewhere in the searching, we left fliers with the manager of a place that recommended we talk to a psychic that lived there. And we did. He said his sense was that in about six weeks, she'd be ready to come home.

That gave hope, but of course we kept looking.

It can feel like you're out there alone. Not everyone is kind or understanding when you're dealing with something that overtakes your life and mentally brings you to your knees the way the loss of a child or sibling can. Not knowing, not even if she left on her own or not, leaves so much room for crippling fears. Every cruelty seems like just too much.

But there were amazing things, too. Although we were rarely back home, busy looking everywhere else, that small town rallied. One of their own was missing. There were people we barely knew doing everything they could, getting the word out.

Truckers we never spoke to were passing the word amongst themselves and stopping by the print shop to pick up stacks of fliers, taking them with them on their hauls. I have no idea how far the fliers got, but they were in neighboring states, and that, ultimately, led to finding her again.

After she'd been gone for weeks, the police from a city a few hours north called. They said she'd been turned in by a new friend who was jealous of my sister's friendship with a mutual male friend. The other girl had been vacationing in a neighboring state and saw a flier, recognizing my sister although she was using another name. When she returned home, she turned her in.

The police picked her up but left it up to my sister whether she was going to go home or not. We drove up to meet her, and talk to her - six weeks to the day from the day she disappeared. She had left on a whim - someone she'd just met had asked her if she wanted to go to this city with him, and she agreed.

As I mentioned earlier, there were reasons she'd want to leave. She'd tried to leave before with a friend, who was in an even worse situation at home, but that time their notes and preparations to run were found in their locker at school and they were stopped. When she saw this opportunity to leave, even though it meant going without her friend, she did.

Part of the time she crashed with people she'd just met. Sometimes she had nowhere to go and was on the streets. She wore out a new pair of shoes with all the walking she did. Most of what happened to her while she was gone, what she did to survive, she never talked about.

She was ready to go home.