For the Lost Blog

I coasted on the good feelings of Jaycee Dugard’s recovery for several months, so to start the year with the news that Carlina White, abducted from Harlem Hospital in 1987, has been found safe is very good news indeed. Carlina found herself on NCMEC after she noticed her “mother” had no birth certificate for her and she did not resemble her. It is also reported that she has a younger brother, who I hope the authorities will also check to make sure he is not an abducted child. Carlina’s case is of course different from Dugard’s in that almost all authorities involved thought she was still alive and abducted by someone who wanted a child, which is a common motivation in infant abductions. Since there was a possibility she was involved in a black market adoption (along with Christopher Dansby and Shane Walker, also young children abducted from New York in the same time period) I hope that this may lead to them coming home as well.

After some time thinking about the subject, I have decided to open the For the Lost site to include people missing from Canada and Mexico. All of the previous criteria must be met to include a case from either of those places. (Mexican cases do not have NCIC numbers and thus do not need them for inclusion; Canadian cases can have them but entry is not a requirement and thus lack of one does not mean the case cannot be taken.)