I worked for a university police department and we took missing persons reports all the time. Most of the time, we were able to find the people fairly quickly, or they turned up right away, because they were never really missing. Sometimes they had spent the night with a “friend” that the parents didn’t know about, or had gone on an impromptu vacation, or were too overwhelmed with school work to return missed calls. Or they were just being stupid. They’re kids—it happens.
But on one occasion, a student who worked in the school bookstore failed to show up for work. For about an hour or so, his co-workers and supervisors tried to get a hold of him, with no luck. One of his friends went to his off-campus apartment and knocked, but no one came to the door. Then they called the police. One of the patrol officers took a missing persons report and contacted one of the detectives that was on duty.
The detective spoke to the book store supervisor who explained that this student was always very responsible and had never failed to show up for work. The detective contacted the student’s mother to see if she had heard from him. She had not. The detective updated her as to what was going on and then had officers look for video cameras near the missing student’s apartment. After reviewing video, provided by neighbors, the detective found video of the missing student exiting his apartment building and getting into a car that had a rideshare sticker in the window.
The detective contacted the law enforcement liaison of the rideshare company and obtained the information that the missing student had been taken to the local airport. The detective drove to the airport and met with Airport Division police officers who helped him check for video of the missing student. They found video of the missing student purchasing a ticket at a specific airline counter. The detective and airport officers went to the ticket counter for the airline and determined that the missing student purchased a one-way ticket to Maui and did not check in any luggage. The video showed that he did not have any carryon bags either. The detective confirmed that, as far as the airline could tell, the missing student had boarded the plane to Maui, which had already landed.
The detective contacted the Maui police department and explained about our missing student and communicated his concern that the student seemed to fly to Maui with no real plan to stay or return. The detective said that his biggest fear was that the student had planned to commit suicide. The detective sent screen captures to the Maui police department.
And, surprisingly, even to us, the Maui police department called us back a few hours later, with the missing student sitting in their police station. They had found him sitting on the beach and collected him for a mental health hold, and then contacted us. We reported this back to his mother, who took the next available flight to Maui to recover her son.
One of the best, real missing persons reports we investigated.