Missing Child

Don’t worry…all ends well in this story.

Jonah was depressed the week before camp on account of breaking up with his summer girlfriend.  I tried to get him to go shopping with me or go out to a movie to no avail.

Finally on Friday he put his arms around me and said, “I’m going to go shopping by myself later.  Why do you keep trying to do stuff with me?  Are you going to miss me when I’m at camp?”

“Yes!” I said.

Not only did I want to make sure he was doing okay after the breakup, but sending a child off to camp had taken on a heavy significance after the recent flood in Texas.  Over a hundred people have died, and two Christian summer camps were washed away along with many of the young campers.  I kept thinking of the parents who sent those kids off to camp, later going over their last hug, last words, last good-bye.  I wanted to send Jonah off in the right way.

Neither of us slept Saturday night, though I may have drifted off for an hour or two before my alarm blared at 2:30 am Sunday morning. 

As we drove up Sunport Boulevard, I yawned and said, “I’ll just drop you off and you can call me if you have any problems.  Do you have your confirmation number?”

“My phone doesn’t work because of all the parental restrictions.  It won’t turn on until seven in the morning.  I can’t call or even text.”  He also couldn’t pull up his email.

I parked and walked in with him.  I pulled up the email from the airline, entered the confirmation number for Jonah’s flight, and printed out his boarding tickets.

“Hmmm.  Denver?  That’s a big airport.  You need to be very careful getting through there.  It can be confusing.”  I was surprised at my past self for buying a ticket with a layover in such a huge airport, but the camp was strict on their pickup window.  I assumed that I had bought whatever ticket was needed to get him there before four, hence dropping him off at o’ dark thirty.

TSA was closed because it was so early, so I bought Jonah a Dr. Pepper, and we sat at a table.

“I’m sorry you weren’t able to see your girlfriend one last time before you broke up,” I told him.

“It’s okay, Mom,” he said.

Enough said.  I had nothing else to say for the five more minutes before we decided to check the lines.  There was a massive sign saying, “Only ticketed passengers beyond this point.”

“That doesn’t apply to mothers,” I said as I followed him up the escalator.

Jonah was a head taller than any of the other people in line, so it was easy for me to watch him from just outside the entrances to the lines.  I was still too close. 

A uniformed security guard came up to me with her hand on her weapon, “Ma’am, you’re not allowed up here.”

“I just need to see that my son gets through security on time.”

She didn’t care and directed me to a place behind the opaque bulletproof glass.  As soon as she left, I snuck back out.  Another employee also reprimanded me, but I took baby steps backwards towards the escalators until I saw Jonah pass the first guard, where you have to show your ticket and ID.  Only after I felt safe leaving him did I turn around and hightail it out of the airport.

When I came home, I heard Sophia throwing up.  I sat outside her bedroom door for a while, but she didn’t answer my text, “Poor Sophia.  Can I bring you anything or help you?” 

Twenty minutes later at 4:30, I texted, “I’m heading to bed.”

I woke up and went to church as usual and then texted her again as soon as church let out, “How goes it, Sophia?”

She called me and told me she thought she had a kidney infection and needed to go to the ER, but first she needed to work on her school assignment, which was due that day.  So I stayed at church to visit with my friends and eat lunch during coffee hour.  Sophia was ready to go when I came home.

We were walking up the grassy slope from the lower parking lot up to the ER entrance when my phone rang.  It was a Pennsylvania number.  It was the camp representative assigned to meet Jonah at the gate at the Pittsburgh airport.

“Is this Jonah’s mother?”

“Yes.”

“I’m at his gate.  His flight came in, but Jonah was not on the airplane.”

“Lord have mercy!  Hold on let me check something.”

I looked at my Find My app.  Jonah had been at the Denver airport two hours earlier.  Current location unknown.

“I can see he was in Denver two hours ago, but I don’t know where he is now.  I’ll see what I can find out and call you if I have any information.”

As I pressed the end button, I frantically went through all the possibilities.  Had he fallen into a deep sleep in the airport and missed his flight?  Had he taken another flight without telling anyone?  Was his phone battery dead?  I didn’t think sex traffickers would want a huge, stinky sixteen-year-old boy, but kidnapping still made it to my list of worries. Where was he!!!

I called Mike but had to hang up in the triage room after the nurse pointed at the no cell phone sign.  Back in the waiting room, I dialed the airline.  After an hour on hold or following the stupid phone tree that didn’t have a number to press to find a missing minor, I was able to talk to a representative. 

I explained the whole story to her and asked, “Can you tell me if he missed his second flight?”

She said, “I can’t give out any information over the phone.”

“I’ve got to find my son. What can I do?”

“You should try calling the airport.”

“Can you give me their number?”

She gave me the number for the Denver airport and said, “I hope you find your son.”

I pressed end and dialed the Denver airport.  It was only a twenty-minute wait before someone talked to me. 

After hearing the story, she said, “You need to talk to the airline.”

“I already did.  They wouldn’t give me any information over the phone.”

“That’s their right.”

“My minor son is missing.  He was last seen in your airport.  I need to you help me find him.”

“We don’t have a list of passengers flying through our airport or anything.  There isn’t anything I can do.”

“What should I try next?”

“You can call the Denver airport police.”

I again asked for the new number and hung up.  While all this was going on, Sophia and I had been brought to a room.  A nurse had been in and out and hooked her up to an IV.  We were alone, waiting for the doctor, when I tried the Denver airport police.  After another ten minutes, I was able to explain my situation yet again.

The policeman on the phone asked, “What gate was he at?”

“How am I supposed to know that?  Wait.  Let me look up his itinerary.”  I wished I had taken a picture of his boarding pass, but why would I ever expect to need that?  I pulled up the email that I had used for his confirmation number, and my heart dropped.  His layover was supposed to have been at the Midway Airport in Chicago.  Something was terribly wrong.  That’s when the physician walked in the door.

I told the police, “I’m at the ER with my daughter, and the doctor just came in.  I’ll call you back.”

Sophia did have a kidney infection and received a prescription for an antibiotic.

While we were waiting to let the IV rehydrate her and get the discharge papers, my phone rang over and over again.

The camp priest called.  I ended the call abruptly to take a call from the camp employee at the airport.  He had no news and was calling to see if I had an update.  He didn’t mention the time, but I knew that the pickup window was almost at an end. They needed to get the campers back to camp.

Then Basil, who is spending his summer working at the Antiochian Village Camp, called and promised to take care of Jonah even if he had to drive to the airport himself. 

I called Mike and asked him if he could find an updated itinerary that would show the change to Denver.

The next call I received was a collect call from the Florida State Penitentiary for a garbled name.  What in the world???  I hung up on that one, feeling more freaked out than ever.

Mike found the itinerary that had been switched that morning rerouting Jonah to the Denver airport.  We had a new flight number and an expected arrival in Pittsburgh at 5:30. Basil was at the camp office and acted as point man for me.  His calm, reassuring voice did more than anything to help me start breathing again.

I wasn’t happy until Jonah texted me.  Poor guy was just following his boarding pass and had no idea anything was amiss until he took his phone off of airplane mode and saw all the missed calls and my desperate texts.

He wrote, “I’m okay.  I’m with the camp people.”

I typed, “wonderful”

“I just got on the on the plane in time.  Just a bit last minute.”

That’s where I explained about the change in flights and the confusion.  He had gotten one of my calls when he was seated on the second flight but didn’t take it since he was on the plane.  Then he put his phone on airplane mode.

He ended our conversation with, “I love you and sorry for scaring you.”

My heart full of love for my son, I sent some heart emojis.  Then I threw myself into helping Mike make a nice dinner for our friends.  We seated fifteen people and served tri-tip steak, mashed potatoes, sous-vide carrots, spinach, and fried mushrooms.  I had two glasses of white wine with my meal.

Those were two of the scariest hours in a long time.  I’m thankful that it was an itinerary mix-up and nothing really bad happened.  When Jonah came home two weeks later, he texted me every step of his journey.  He came home from camp in good spirits, though he had a bad head cold, and he is looking forward to the new school year at a new private school.  All’s well that ends well.