A child gone missing is every parent’s worst nightmare. Every year in Costa Rica, hundreds of adolescents and young adults between the ages of 12 and 17 are reported as missing. Some have unhappy endings, but thankfully the majority of cases are resolved with the person accounted for. Anyone who has experienced the hours of fear and dread while your child is unaccounted for will never forget the feeling.
When my older daughter did not arrive on the 4pm bus after spending the morning and early afternoon on a tour boat, I did not immediately worry. I was the manager of the tour company, and she knew the crew and would help out when needed. She had taken her new camera to catch shots of dolphins frolicking to the delight of happy tourists. She was also carrying a new laptop and an early iPhone (this was about 15 years ago).
When the 6pm bus – the final bus of the day – arrived and she was not on it, I made the 10km drive directly into town. I went to the pier, to our office, and canvassed several restaurants and bars in town. My daughter, still a month from her 18th birthday, had been spotted several times earlier in the day with an unidentified young man in various restaurants, taking advantage of Costa Rica’s lax drinking laws.
The unidentified young man worried me. Maybe he was one of the guys from the boat, all of whom she had known for a few years. But what if he wasn’t? What if he was with her because he saw the iPhone, laptop, and camera? People have been killed here for less. As the evening wore on, I made a return trip home, hoping she had called our landline phone with an explanation, but the phone stayed silent. After midnight, unable to sleep, I went back to town, with no real plan. I drove aimlessly past the now-closed bars and restaurants. I retraced the routes where she may have walked.
At one point, at around 2am, on the highway outside town, I saw two cars parked butt-to-butt, both trunks open, and a few silhouetted people milling around. In the darkest corner of my mind, I imagined these were her kidnappers, and they were debating what to do with her. I did not stop, of course – whatever they were doing at 2am would have been suicidal to investigate.
I spent the hours until the break of day alternately trying to pray and convincing myself nothing had happened. My daughter and her brother – older by 1.5 years – had flown to several places as unaccompanied minors. They had once spent a couple of late-night hours at a random Madrid bus stop, due to a miscommunication with their host family. All of the possibilities flooded my tired and distraught mind as I went to the police station and filed a missing persons report.
I had to get home – life goes on, and my younger daughter would be getting ready to be dropped off at school, and the office I managed had to be opened at 7 am. On the drive home, I thought of my family in the States. We had an upcoming reunion planned, less than two weeks away. Plane tickets were paid for, plans made. Preparing for the worst, I rehearsed what I would say.
I walked into the house, saw the anxious faces of my wife and daughter, and sadly shook my head. In that moment, as if scripted, the phone rang. It was my daughter. She had spent the night sleeping just off the waterfront, on a ledge surrounded by boulders, in the area where now stands a world-class marina. But then it was a pile of rocks overlooking the water. She confessed she had too much to drink, and said she was too embarrassed to call when she missed the last bus. I was so happy and relieved I could have killed her, I joked.
As a postscript, about a month later I went to the police station on an unrelated matter, and the person who I spoke with was the same person who had taken the missing person’s report. He remembered me and asked what had happened. I was only too happy to let him know that in the end, the news was good.
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Don Mateo
