The same week Attari vanishes, a 23-year-old African-American man named Wallace Richards of Berkeley disappears after dropping off a female friend at her job in San Francisco and taking the car for the day. Her car turns up a few days later, but he never does.
But few have heard of Richards.
Run his name through an Internet search engine and only a handful of hits pop up. This newspaper has covered the case and a few local TV stations ran short reports during the first week he was gone. But there has been little attention to the case in recent weeks.
There is no reward money or Nancy Grace knocking.
Why do some people get more public exposure than most other missing persons? Why do the media keep covering some cases while not giving others any public exposure?
A person's place in the community, their family's aggressiveness and resources, timing and even race all play a part, criminal justice experts and missing persons advocates say.
"If people don't have contacts, or the wherewithal to know whom to call, connections or a family friend who is an attorney, they won't have the same advantages as someone else who does," said Polly Franks, a board member with the National Coalition of Victims in Action in Richmond, Va.
"The Adam Walsh case in the early'80s made it because John Walsh (now host of "America's Most Wanted") knew how to make noise and was not intimidated by the police and the press. He was savvy, he was educated, he was an American citizen."
That's why some missing people Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy and Natalee Holloway, to name a few become household names, while others never make the evening news.
According to the FBI National Crime Information Center, there are nearly 48,000 active missing-adult cases in the nation. More than 30,000 of those people have been missing one year or more, according to data from July 2004.
Locally, the number of "missing people" often includes Alzheimer's disease patients who walk away from facilities, elderly people who get lost or disoriented, or people who are on a weekend tryst and don't want to be found by a partner or spouse.
Between the first part of 2004 and late last month, Oakland police investigated 984 missing person cases. During that same time period, police investigated 2,159 juvenile runaway cases. Investigators say the average time a juvenile is missing is about three days, while some missing-adult cases have been on the books for decades.
There are plenty of bogus cases that hurt the legitimate ones. Experts say that because of people such as Jennifer Wilbanks, the so-called "Runaway Bride," police and the media can be wary of covering every supposed missing person.
Then there are the cases of the people who for one reason or another don't want to be found.
"There is no law against someone checking out of their life and not coming home," said Kim Petersen, executive director of the Carole Sund/Carrington Memorial Reward Foundation. "An adult can take off and take care of themselves, so there isn't that sense of urgency."
The family of Wallace Richards, or "Little Wallace" as he is called, say he would never leave without telling someone. He kept in daily contact with girlfriend Sabrina Ford, a 23-year-old recent journalism graduate from San Francisco State University, and lived with his mother and family, who run Richards Family Day Care in Berkeley. He also owned a home in American Canyon near Vallejo with a friend.
"Wallace would never leave voluntarily," said Ford, of Hayward.
Sister Shaniece Richards-Hughes, 26, of San Leandro said her younger brother is extremely close to her 2-year-old son, James. "He's a very proud uncle," she said. "We need a second home just to fit all of the gifts that he gives to him."
Richards is a 2000 graduate of Berkeley High School who was set to re-enroll in January at SFSU to become a television cameraman. His family said he does not use drugs and rarely drinks alcohol.
Police records show he was arrested once in 2001 for grand theft, which his mother said resulted when he unknowingly bought a stolen motorcycle on the Internet. The case was never prosecuted.
His relatives say he never left overnight without alerting someone. "He's never done anything like this," his sister said.
Still, Ford and the Richards family have had little luck getting news stories out about his disappearance.
"It's extremely frustrating," said Ford. "We were talking about the doctor and the amount of coverage she's been getting. We were praying for that family when all this happened to us."
Ford said she wishes the Richards case was getting the same attention as the Attari story.
http://www.insidebayarea.com/argus/localnews/ci_3279935