Kidnapped!

She disappeared into thin air.

I would not wish it on my enemies, the stress, the helplessness one feels and the depression and anger that gnaws at you, as you come face to face with the disappearance of a person you consider least likely to be a kidnap victim.

As a low key person, she wears no bling, does not carry a lot of money, was never into jewelry, is often under dressed and at 52 years of age one assumes that human traffickers would not consider her a target even for organ harvesting. In other words, there was logical reason to grab her or kidnap her. This was no longer some rumor, some unsubstantiated new story, this was no longer hearsay. This was real life, up close and personal.

I can now categorically state for the record that there are people who REGULARLY grab complete strangers for the purposes of robbing them and then dumping them. This was no urban legend or panic among easily scared pre-teens. This is just one of 3 incidents I now personally know of where people in a van or a cab actually grabbed a woman for robbery. One of them was our caretaker in Lipa City and this recent one was my former colleague at ABS CBN, Dolly Ambion Cruz an administrative officer, a sister in Christ and team mate in the days of my ANC talk show: “Straight Talk”. While we were still searching for Dolly, my wife learned of a third incident from her circle of expat women.

When someone disappears, some may find relief in the logical process of elimination. But the minute you come up with zero reasons for her to disappear, then you begin to get really worried which does not take long to cause you to be frightened, frightened and very angry. The thought of going from hospital to hospital was disturbing but when it came to consider the possibility that people might soon have to go from morgue to morgue, the entire idea became simply repulsive.

How do you cross over from “missing” to “deceased”? It was not simply a thought, the idea felt like an act of betrayal, like a decision to give up on someone you cared for a lot. That’s when I learned that families and friends of missing people were largely on their own. You would be lucky if you found a sympathetic ear among the police, even more fortunate if they actually formed a task force to track her down.

But in a country where all the politicians combined, probably have more guns and as many bodyguards as there are cops, it is unrealistic if not unfair to expect the police to do or accomplish much. Actually, the fact that they do solve crimes and arrests criminals is a minor miracle of hard work. Unless we in the media actually made a stink of it, or the victim happened to be the relative of a very rich and influential person, no one would bark at the cops and the NBI to do something. The thought that ABS CBN gave more importance to the high drama of Kris Aquino versus James Yap instead of the disappearance of a loved and respected officer did not go unnoticed among Facebook friends. Strange that we hear so many stories of the van and taxi kidnapping incidents but we never hear about any arrests or crack down on these demons!

As helpless as one feels, everybody just tries to do something on their own. I found myself asking, and receiving help from GLOBE Telecoms to try and track the location of my friend’s cellphone, as well as to check when and where her last call was made. The process is quite difficult and requires a lot of legal stuff but to their credit, my friends at GLOBE Telecoms kindly provided the information that in the end was unfortunately insignificant.

To begin with my friend’s phone was an ABS CBN phone so she used it only for official calls thereby naturally little used. Second the phone did not have its GPS tracking service “on”, so we could not pin point her location. When I hit that blank wall, I began to get annoyed at the thought that her sense of independence, and her “I’ll do it myself” attitude would probably be to blame why we can’t find her.

We all behave like her, doing errands all alone, never considering that we could be in an accident, have a stroke, get robbed and get dumped with no identification cards and no way for people to assist your relatives. Out of frustration, I said note to self : get dog tags for family, impose strict call-in/ check-in calls. Then I had a learning and teaching moment with our daughter that this was a perfect example of why I am very strict about communications and security.

As last resort, my friend Attorney Robby Consunji suggested I contact a “profiler” who might be able to help out. I did, but as we began to set up our communications, I felt held back, as if something was happening, but I could not explain it.

Eventually, for three days and three nights, almost on an hourly basis many people including myself could only do so much and the best was to pray. I called, texted and posted on Facebook asking friends to send up a torrent of earnest prayers, to intervene in prayers and to pray against the evil and mystery that was confronting us. All I could do was to claim what the Bible said: The prayers of the righteous, achieves much. I even got my special prayer warrior and daughter to partner up with my wife and I to pray in earnest for Dolly’s safety and well-being.

On fifth day of her disappearance, I wondered to myself: if I feel so tired, sleepless and depressed, how could her husband, children and loved ones be feeling. I simply prayed more, feeling guilty that I had to fly out to Tacloban City for a series of speaking engagements. I simply lifted it all to the Lord.

At precisely 6:28 pm last Friday, Dolly’s husband called to inform me that Dolly had been found. She was alive, she was kidnapped and woke up to find herself in Baguio City. All I could say was PRAISE GOD. Praise him for answered prayers.

I have lived many years as a Christian and I have seen so many answered prayers as much as I have known of unanswered prayers. But for Dolly to be alive after five days is a miracle. That miracle is evidence that GOD hears and feels the torrent of prayers we collectively send up.

Soon after a friend posted this on Facebook, a verse from Psalm 22: 4-5 “In you our fathers put their trust; they trusted and you delivered. They cried to you and were saved; in you they trusted and were not disappointed”.

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