\t\u201cCan I go to a friend\u2019s house?\u201d<\/p>\n
\tThe text arrived at 9 AM on the first day of class after the holidays. I\u2019d already told my youngest daughter that she couldn\u2019t go to anyone\u2019s house during the week until she improved her grades.<\/p>\n
\tAfter reminding her of that, the texts became more insistent and angry, but I stood my ground. She concluded by telling me that \u201cyou\u2019re not my father.\u201d Her anger was over the top, but then she\u2019s fifteen. I didn\u2019t take it too seriously. Later in the day, I texted her to let her know what I was thinking of making for supper. Her responses were normal.<\/p>\n
\tBut when I went to pick her up from school at 2:24, she didn\u2019t come to the car. She did not respond to texts or to my phone calls.<\/p>\n
\tI eventually went school security, but they were unable to locate her. A deputy sheriff at the school even drove by the friend\u2019s house to see if she was there and she was not. Later, my wife went by the friend\u2019s house and the girl reported that she hadn\u2019t seen my daughter since that morning.<\/p>\n
\tWe tried contacting her by cellphone over the next several hours to no effect. Our cellphone company allows us to track her phone\u2019s location\u2014but that works only if her phone was turned on. Unfortunately, she had turned her phone off.<\/p>\n
\tThat evening, friends sat with us as we waited and tried to find out what was going on. We posted to Facebook and attempted to find out from her other friends if they might know where she had gone. We called the sheriff. They told us they\u2019d send a deputy around to take a missing person\u2019s report from us. He did not arrive for six hours: around 11:15 PM. <\/p>\n
\tWhile the deputy was still there, the mother of one of our daughter\u2019s friends called us to let us know that our daughter had finally responded to a text from her. Our daughter told the mom that she was at a friend\u2019s house. But she refused to identify the friend. When I checked the phone\u2019s location, it finally located it within about a mile of a cell tower in Lancaster. The friend whose house she had asked to visit was within that range. We wondered if the friend was hiding our daughter.<\/p>\n
\tSo, we went to sleep that night worried, but confident she was at that friend\u2019s house.<\/p>\n
\tThe next morning, we went to the high school, wondering if our daughter would show up. She didn\u2019t. But the friend whom we thought she was with did show up; so we realized then that she was not with the friend that she had previously asked to visit.<\/p>\n
\tAfter we returned home, we set up a page on Facebook to further publicize that our daughter was missing and we were looking for her. We contacted various agencies and the news media. Within three hours, over four hundred people had joined the Facebook page. People volunteered to make fliers and look for her. We scheduled a meeting at our church at 5 PM for people to begin searching door to door within that mile circle where he phone was located. <\/p>\n
\tMy wife left for the church about 4:30. I stayed home in case she called or showed up there. Our pastor was just driving up to the house at 4:45 when I got a phone call: it was my daughter!
\nShe\u2019d been dropped off at a gas station and a friend of hers had found her there. She wanted me to come get her.<\/p>\n
\tI called my wife to let her know. More than a hundred people had already gathered at the church to begin the search. There was much rejoicing at the news that we had found her.<\/p>\n
\tTogether with my pastor, I went and got my daughter. She had been without her medication for her bipolar disorder and ADHD for more than twenty-four hours by that point. I had her pills with me when I got her and she took them as soon as I picked her up. She was wearing different clothing and her hair had been dyed a different color from the day before.<\/p>\n
\tSo where had she been and what had happened? <\/p>\n
The father of a friend of hers had been texting her at school that morning. He had encouraged her to leave. And so it was to that friend\u2019s house that she had gone. While she was there, her friend had given her different clothing and had dyed her hair.<\/p>\n
\tThe next day, we took my daughter to meet with her therapist and her psychiatrist. Both lectured her rather sternly. And her psychiatrist increased her medication dosage to a higher level. The therapist started meeting with her twice a week instead of once a week. And her psychiatrist also met with her more frequently as well. <\/p>\n
\tWe put my daughter on independent study for her schooling.<\/p>\n
It has been two years now since my daughter ran away. Her behavior has steadily improved and we’ve had no further serious incidents. Her new regimen of medication is thus far working relatively well. She is not cured. We live day to day. <\/p>\n
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