THE GIRL EVERYONE WAS LOOKING FOR
I was fifteen years old when I learned that sometimes you don’t get time to think about whether you’re brave.
Sometimes, something terrible happens, and you simply move.
That afternoon in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I was outside when I heard that a little girl had disappeared.
Her name was Jocelyn.
She was only five years old.
At first, I didn’t fully understand what was happening. People were talking quickly. Adults were moving through the neighborhood. There was fear in their voices.
Someone said she had been kidnapped.
I remember looking at my bicycle.
It wasn’t anything special.
Just a bike I used to ride around the neighborhood.
But that afternoon, it suddenly felt like the most important thing I owned.
I got on it.
I didn’t have a plan.
I didn’t have a map.
I wasn’t a police officer.
I wasn’t some trained rescuer.
I was just a teenager who knew there was a little girl somewhere who needed someone to find her.
So I started riding.
I went through streets I knew well, watching every driveway and every parked car.
My heart was pounding.
Every vehicle looked suspicious.
Every unfamiliar face made me slow down.
I kept asking myself the same question.
“Where would I go if I were trying to hide?”
Then I saw a car.
Something about it didn’t feel right.
I couldn’t explain exactly why.
It was just there, moving through the neighborhood in a way that caught my attention.
I looked again.
And suddenly, I saw something that made my stomach drop.
I thought I might have found her.
I started pedaling faster.
The car moved.
So did I.
For several minutes, I followed it through the neighborhood.
I knew I was taking a risk.
I also knew I couldn’t simply turn around.
What if Jocelyn was inside?
What if this was the car everyone had been searching for?
I kept going.
The car turned.
I turned.
It accelerated.
So did I.
My legs started burning, but I refused to stop.
I wasn’t thinking about what might happen to me anymore.
I was thinking about one five-year-old girl.
And then the car finally slowed down.
My heart nearly stopped.
Because suddenly, the moment I had been chasing was no longer in the distance.
It was right in front of me.
And I had no idea what was going to happen next.
