LaSharon Farmer spent a recent afternoon down on Baltimore Street, tracking a tip that someone there saw a girl who could have been her 15-year-old daughter, Emani Baxter.
Finally, Farmer spotted the girl, but it wasn?t Emani. The Baltimore County teenager was still missing Thursday ? five days after she slipped out while Farmer was asleep. So Emani?s mother is headed home.
“I haven?t slept in my bed because I feel like I?d be too comfortable,” Farmer said of the last several days. “If I?m not going out [looking for her], I don?t feel like I did enough.”
This is at least the third time Emani has left home, Farmer said. But the teen always called right away to say she was OK.
This time, Farmer said, there?s been no word.
Typically, about half the children reported have run away more than once, said John Worden, who runs a police department counseling team that he calls the “best-kept secret in Baltimore County.”
There were 2,497 children reported missing last year, said county police spokesman Bill Toohey. At year?s end, 59 cases remained open. Toohey said most children are home within a couple days.
Police say one spot they?re looking for Emani is in the 400 block of East Baltimore Street. It?s a block lined with strip clubs and sex novelty shops. Farmer suspects Emani might want to work for an escort service.
Concerns about runaway teenagers go beyond getting them out of immediate danger, said Ross Pologe, executive director of the Fellowship of Lights, a Baltimore-area organization that works with runaways. Preparing them to enter an adult work force can be even harder if they?ve missed important benchmarks, such as graduation, he said.
“What is the dream?” Pologe said. For some runaways, he said, “there?s no focus on the future. It?s not been cultivated, in a way.”
Emani always wanted to be a dancer and she loves to read.
“She?s all I have,” Farmer said. “I need my baby home.”
