Something I keep thinking about. If I awakened (and fwiw I don't believe EG's story) and my stepchild was gone and the door was ajar, who would be the first person I would call? My mate? The other parent? The police? Another parent of a friend he plays with? A neighbor? What order would those phone calls be made? Now, if I had anything to do with my stepchild being gone I would feel like I needed to behave as if there was a sense of urgency when I finally decided to make that phone call and I would call the police first.
A 5 year old and a back door ajar wouldn't make me immediately think my child had been kidnapped. Not in 15 minutes from the time I woke up to frantically going to the neighbors and calling the police. I haven't been in the situation but it has me thinking.
Ive had two experiences in this...neither did I call police first.
First time we were home working in the yard and my two year old son was right with me playing. I turned around for a second and when I looked back, he was gone. We live in the country. I hollered to my husband and we ran around looking for him, outside, inside, then I took one more look in the house and then I was calling police. We found him in the back bathroom, with the lights OFF going potty [emoji15]. We had yelled for him and looked there and he never answered us. Ugh. Scared ya to death! Calling police was not my first thought. First thought is he ran off exploring.
Second was the same child, he walked away from school (pre-k). I was a few minutes late getting to school to pick him up and he got scared thinking I wasnt coming and took off walking. We didnt know this though. The teacher was talking with another parent and never knew he walked off (school changed the pickup policy after this!!). The teacher couldnt tell us if he got in a car or walked off. Even the school didnt call police. We looked everywhere for him, twice, all teachers on deck. We were getting ready to call police when a parent brought him back to school. My dad lived in the neighborhood and he was trying to walk to his house. The parent knew he looked way too small to be walking alone and brought him back (but then dear heavens, that brought another discussion again of not getting in the car with a stranger!!!). I didnt call my husband. I called my dad because he lived nearby and told him not to leave his house, hung up and went looking for my son. My husband was furious at me for not calling him but honestly I was thinking fast. Where would he go? My dads, called, done. Back to physically looking. I wasnt thinking of notifying everyone at that time. Had we had to call police, then I would have called him right away.
In both of these cases, our minds automatically went to he walked off and was exploring or hiding. Your initial thought isnt that they were taken. You want to look first and rule it out THEN call police.
I personally think it would be telling to see if police were the first to be called then family. Or did she call family/friends first then called police? Because she ran to the neighbors house and asked them to call, Im not sure. I would never ask my neighbor to call, I would call myself.
Happy to say my son never scared us like that again :/
IMO, anything I say is JMO
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RIP Lisa Harvey ❤️
http://www.news-ridgecrest.com/news/story.pl?id=0000007796