Missing boy found with mother

By Meg Olson

A colossal search for a five-year-old Blaine boy who disappeared from his bed on Friday morning ended with a collective sigh of relief when the child was found safe with his mother.

“We had a national APB posted, the borders were on alert, the FBI was on alert and on-scene – we take missing children very seriously,” said Blaine deputy police chief Mike Haslip.

Police were alerted by Blaine schools after the boys’ 13-year old sister told school personnel she and her four sisters were frantically searching for their little brother who had been sound asleep in his bed at 7 a.m. but gone at 7:20 a.m. The children’s mother had left the boy in the care of his sisters, the eldest of which is 19, while she was out of town on business and had not returned the previous evening as anticipated, Haslip said.

Police arrived at the home on 10th Street at 8 a.m. as the older girls were calling friends and relatives trying to locate their mother. “We found a house full of very upset kids,” Haslip said. “This was their baby brother and he was fast asleep one minute and then gone. It was a kind of suspicious situation. The back door was open.”

Police immediately launched a search for the boy and began efforts to locate the mother. “We had upwards of 30 personnel involved in a ground search as well as the border patrol helicopter,” Haslip said.

By 8:45 a.m. several dozen members of the U.S. border patrol, Customs, the FBI, North Whatcom Fire and Rescue Services and community volunteers were combing the area. By 9 a.m. a command center was set up at the community center and more volunteers started coming in. ”We had widespread community support,” Haslip said. Groups of volunteers from Crown Towing and Blaine Public Works joined the search.

Officers looking for the boys’ mother finally found her at a friend’s house in Birch Bay, and her son was with her. She told police she had returned home at 7 a.m. and taken the boy. “She apparently thought her other children had heard her come and go,” Haslip said, adding she said she had called to her daughter in the shower through the bathroom door.

“Those girls were some sort of upset,” Haslip said. “They’re a really nice bunch of kids and they were scared to death about their brother.”. .
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