posted September 22, 2004 04:13 AM         

Don't get me wrong... what happened to Laci Peterson and her baby is awful, but it's not like SHE'S the only missing mother out there. Where's the love for the rest? Where is the concern for poor mothers who have been abducted?... or even poor children for that matter.

Anyhow... my rant is done... the article follows...

Of many missing, few make news
By M.S. Enkoji -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PDT Friday, April 18, 2003

She's a missing pregnant woman -- eight months pregnant -- and hardly anyone knows her name.
On an uncomfortably warm May night in 2001, 26-year-old Angelina Evans took a walk from the Sacramento motel where she was staying -- and never came back.

So when the bodies of an adult female and an infant boy washed ashore in Richmond earlier this week, Evans' family wasn't thinking of Laci Peterson.

"It's just been so emotional," said Pam Innen, Evans' aunt.

In so many ways, Evans bears little resemblance to the petite, dark-haired Modesto woman who was eight months pregnant on Dec. 24 when she disappeared: She is 5-foot-10; she is blond; she is the seasoned mother of five. She was on welfare and had dropped out of Hiram Johnson High School. She mingled with a rough crowd, and Sacramento police say she worked as a prostitute.

"Regardless," said her grandmother, "she was still a person, and she was loved."

The frenzied focus on the missing Modesto woman, the scores of volunteers who searched for Peterson and the scrutiny of dozens of authorities never came Evans' way, said her family, who have soldiered on to find her.

"It kind of hurts," said Delores Holden, 70, Evans' grandmother. "And I know we're not the only ones."

How the names of some missing children and adults come to be ingrained in the national consciousness -- while others don't -- can be grossly unfair, said Kim Pasqualini, president of The Nation's Missing Children Organization & Center for Missing Adults.

"The dynamics of each case is so individual," Pasqualini said.

Police investigations into reports of missing persons often are hampered when the victim has a volatile lifestyle or a history of unpredictable behavior, she said. Likewise, the ability to attract media attention to a missing person can be difficult for some families, especially those bogged down with other problems, she said.

The most vulnerable to violence generally aren't middle-class people with stable lifestyles, she said.

"But it is unfortunate that it takes a Chandra Levy or a Laci Peterson case to grab the public's attention," she said.

Authorities are conducting DNA tests to identify both of the bodies that were found about a mile apart on the San Francisco Bay shoreline Sunday and Monday.

Autopsies revealed no cause of death, and further testing is under way.

Levy, also a Modesto woman, had just finished a federal internship in Washington, D.C., when she disappeared in 2001. Her remains were found in a Washington park on May 22, 2002, a year from the day Angelina Evans disappeared.

No cause of death could be determined, and no one has been arrested in her murder.

Agencies and organizations in the business of helping people find missing relatives need to be available for all families, Pasqualini said.

"We as agencies need to be sensitive to these cases that don't get the attention they need," she said. "We need to reach out to them and not wait for them to come to us."

Pasqualini's Phoenix-based organization was the only one to consistently keep in touch with the Evans family, family members said.

In hopes of finding clues about her daughter, Kimberly Evans spent hours driving up and down Stockton Boulevard in Sacramento, sometimes sleeping in her car, rather than leave the street where her only child was last seen. She and a niece -- other relatives had to work -- would post fliers by themselves.

Kimberly Evans, 45, cannot talk publicly about her missing daughter because her emotions overwhelm her when she does, her relatives said.

She has been living with her sister, Innen, and her mother, Holden, since she lost an eye in an accident a few years ago and could no longer work at her print shop job.

Her husband died from cancer a few years before their daughter disappeared.

"She gets angry and upset and then scared," said Holden, who routinely calls coroners up and down the state about unclaimed bodies.

When Kimberly Evans saw the news about the discovery of the two bodies on the rim of the San Francisco Bay, she bolted, disappearing for a while to a special spot close to the bay, said Innen, 46, a clothing store manager who lives in Dixon.

"I can't explain what this has done to her," she said.

Angelina Evans was living in a motel on Stockton Boulevard when she disappeared, her relatives said.

Investigators say she was last seen on the boulevard getting into a pickup truck, painted black with primer, about 12:30 a.m. on May 22, 2001.

Sacramento Police Department detectives followed what leads they had, even working with state and federal agencies, said Sgt. Justin Risley, a department spokesman.

Hospitals were notified about Evans' condition, he said.

"You do as much as you can and hope that something comes up," he said.

She would never leave her children, and she never failed to call her relatives, even if it was just to ask for diaper money, Innen said.

"She was a good, big-hearted kid," her grandmother said. "She was special to us."

posted September 22, 2004 05:07 AM         

I hope you don't mind me posting this in here, but you reminded me of the Children's Memorial Museum in Maryland ~
Remember the Names of the Children