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Missing and endangered

Thousands go missing in Philly every year. Most are found. Will Kia Washington be among them?

Kia Washington
Kia WashingtonRead more

BY EARLY YESTERDAY, Snow-meh-geddon 2015 had coughed out its last harmless flakes. So I turned off the windshield wipers, the better to look out for Ashjakia "Kia" Washington as I crawled through West Philly.

I hadn't much hope of finding her. But for once, I wanted to do something tangible in response to yet another notice from the Philadelphia Police Department that an "endangered" person had gone missing.

The department issues a lot of these alerts, because endangered people are the people we worry about the most: the mentally or medically compromised, the intellectually or physically disabled, the elderly, the underage. Many times, the person is found on the same day the alert is issued, thank God. And I breathe a sigh of relief.

As I did for 21-year-old Michael Barr, who has autism, and who vanished Sunday. By Monday morning, he'd been reunited with his worried family. Ditto for Alecc Porfirio, 15, also autistic, who went missing Thursday and was found the next day in good shape.

Sometimes, the endangered person has a history of wandering, and that both reassures the family (he came home before, he'll come home again, right?) and worries them to death (what if this time is different?).

That's the limbo the family of Kia Washington is in.

Kia, 25, has schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and is erratic when it comes to taking the medications that would help her. She is also learning disabled - she doesn't read or count very well - and, at 4 feet 11 and 80 pounds, looks far younger than her age. She is quiet, well-mannered and socially malleable, says her cousin Marchesu Minor.

And that scares her.

"She's just very vulnerable," says Minor, 50, who spends her days caring for her elderly mother. Kia lives with them on Chancellor Street near 55th.

Kia went missing last April, and stayed away for quite a while. She has two children - a toddler and an infant, by two men - and she took the kids with her when she disappeared. By September she was back. She'd been staying with the older child's father, she explained, but the situation wasn't working out.

Kia looked skinny, tired and wired, says Minor. The children were sent to live with their fathers, and Minor set about trying to stabilize Kia, finding new psychiatric care for her and enrolling her in parenting classes.

"I told her, 'You can't just take off. When people love you, you have to tell them where you're going,' " says Minor.

But Kia is gone again. Minor has not seen her since last Thursday, when Kia left the house to visit her infant son; Minor says she later saw Kia and the child's father at a neighborhood store. When Kia did not return that evening, Minor presumed she had stayed overnight at the man's home and would spend the weekend, as she had in the past.

When she had not returned by Monday evening, and no one had seen her, Minor called the police. By yesterday morning, she was deeply concerned. She and her mother sat in their cozy kitchen, while a freezing wind whipped outside, waiting for word from someone, anyone, that they'd seen Kia.

Minor had just gotten off the phone with police, who were asking more questions about Kia, the spots she might frequent, whom she kept company with.

"She doesn't go out much," says Minor. "She stays home. She plays games on her phone. She studies her parenting workbooks. She's a sweetheart, very good-natured. But she is just so naive."

The odds are that Kia will be found. Of the 4,210 Philadelphians reported missing in 2013, only 257 have not been found, dead or alive. Of the 3,993 people reported missing in 2014 (through Dec. 15), only 621 remain unaccounted for.

Still, those are not small numbers. And among them, no doubt, are some who have gone missing before and whose families expected them to return, the way they always had.

Will Kia be among them, when, this time next year, the numbers of the missing are tallied for 2015?

I leave Minor's house and slowly drive around Kia's neighborhood. I peer into the Rite-Aid at 56th and Chestnut, Sunshine Laundromat at 55th and Locust, the big thrift store at 55th and Walnut where, Minor says, Kia met her second child's father.

I'm looking for a tiny woman with short, auburn braids, wearing light-blue jeans with pink trim and a puffy, turquoise hooded jacket. She is vulnerable and she needs help.

Even if she doesn't know it.

Phone: 215-854-2217

On Twitter: @RonniePhilly

Blog: ph.ly/RonnieBlog

Columns: ph.ly/Ronnie