As a parent, what would you do if you realized that you had no idea where your child was? For Kelly, this thought became a reality when her 14-year-old son didn\u2019t return home after a sleepover at a nearby friend\u2019s house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like most people in her neighborhood, Kelly and her four children have been safely quarantining at home during the coronavirus pandemic. They had only just moved into the neighborhood three months ago. Wanting to alleviate the stress of staying inside, she allowed her 14-year-old son to sleep over at a nearby friend\u2019s house for the first time, with the explicit instructions of staying indoors and returning home immediately in the morning. Since her son didn\u2019t have a cell phone, Kelly also relayed the same message to her son\u2019s friend and his mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next morning, Kelly woke up and realized that her son hadn\u2019t returned home yet. She texted the friend\u2019s mother but didn\u2019t receive any responses. After three attempts of trying to reach the mother through text, Kelly decided to call. Upon calling and getting sent to voicemail, Kelly realized that the number that she had wasn\u2019t actually for the mother, but for the friend\u2019s young teenage sister. Kelly left a voicemail message but still didn\u2019t get a reply back. She decided to go to the friend\u2019s house and realized that nobody was home, which caused her to raise an eyebrow but decided to drive to her son\u2019s school since he frequently played basketball there. Although Kelly had asked him to come back home that morning, she knew that he was still a young teenage boy, so he might have not listened to her. Her worries began to truly skyrocket though when she realized that he wasn\u2019t at the school either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kelly spent the next few hours searching and even asked her family and neighbors to help find her missing son. Having no luck banging on the doors and windows of the house he was supposed to be at, and no luck with driving around searching for him, Kelly went into absolute panic mode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy son is 14-years-old, and he\u2019s a big kid – almost six feet tall. However, in that moment, it didn’t matter how tall or old he was – I didn’t know where my child was. I had not known for hours and I was literally losing my mind.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Kelly thought about calling the police but she didn\u2019t want to tie up emergency services, especially during the pandemic. She was still trying to figure out how to get a hold of the friend\u2019s mother when she decided to go on her phone and Google \u201cWho lives at [the friend\u2019s address]\u201d. Kelly\u2019s search led her to Spokeo, she immediately found contact information for the friend\u2019s father, and she called him and left a voicemail. He called Kelly back and explained that the friend\u2019s mother was his ex-wife, but he reached out and told her to return home immediately. <\/p>\n\n\n\n