Runaway Dylan - Michael

We have been struggling with Dylan lately. I think he is struggling quite a bit with the frustration of not being able to communicate and other general changes here in Cost Rica.

Thursday morning he didn’t want to go to school, but Hannah said that he would get his email account back if he went. So he went—at least in the car. Hannah said that along the way he started hitting her and Julia. Hannah didn’t want to reward his poor behavior by letting him come home. When they got to school, she had to pull him out of the car, and then he ran off. Hannah chased after him but couldn’t catch up. She came back to the school to get the car and follow him. At that point he was gone.

When she first came back to get the car, another mom, Nelsy (the mother of Favoricio, a friend of Dylan’s) began helping. They drove down the road into town and couldn’t find him.

I was home getting ready for work and helping Jonah to be ready to go to school when Hannah got back. Just after I sat down to work at 8:00, she called and told me Dylan had run off and they were trying to find him. I had wondered why she wasn’t back yet and hoped she was just running errands and hadn’t gotten in an accident.

Hannah came and picked up me and Jonah. Nelsy and Caleb were with her. They had already contacted the police. We returned to school. All of Dylan’s classmates were standing against the fence, worried about him. Nelsy didn’t speak English, so she and I started walking down the street asking people if they had seen Dylan, while Hannah continued driving around.

We walked and we called for him. We checked all the side streets and long driveways. We looked over fences into fields. What amazed me was how generally helpful and concerned the people were. And Nelsy was right there talking to everyone asking if they had seen the little lost boy who didn’t speak Spanish. Some of the people went out looking. Eva Cordero (Christian and Sylvia’s mom) was driving all over the place looking for him. She was so worried. (She has been so kind and concerned for our welfare, ever since we arrived.)

We had one lady who was going to light a candle to the Virgin to help us find him and neighbors talking to each other. Nelsy asked a taxi that passed if he would share with the other taxis to watch for the lost boy.

Every now and then Hannah or the Police would drive past us again as Nelsy and I eventually made our way into town. Nelsy suggested we go to this other investigative government agency, El Organismo de Investigacion Judicial. They do some type of investigative stuff. They said they normally don’t do anything about a missing child for at least 24 hours; however, in this instance, because he was new to the area and didn’t know Spanish, they were going to make an exception. It took a while to work through the bureaucracy of it all.

During that time Hannah came by with the passports which the agency wanted and she had the Relief Society president with her (I can’t remember her name, nor could Hannah). I wondered how she had found out to join in the search. Neither of us know.

By now it was after 11:00, so he had been missing for more than 4 hours. Right around 11:30, the agency was about to make some announcement—I’m not exactly sure how that was going to work, if it went to radio or tv stations or what—when they got word from the police that they had found Dylan.

I still haven’t really talked to Dylan about it. I’ve been trying to make up for the missed morning of work, so I’m not real clear on how he was found. My understanding is that one of those annoying cars with the speakers on the roof that normally drive through the neighborhoods advertising dances or something was driving down the street announcing that there was a lost boy. Even though Nelsy and I had talked to a lot of the people along the road, this seems to have gotten the word out even better. One of the people in the neighborhood found Dylan hiding in the bushes near the road about 500 meters from the school.

I called Hannah to let her know. By the time I got a hold of her, she had already met up with Dylan and the people who had found him. While Nelsy and I waited for Hannah to come pick us up, Eva Cordero drove by. I gave her the good news and we rejoiced together.

Hannah picked us up, and we returned to the school, so that Nelsy could get her car. While we were there Dylan’s teacher came out. She was so concerned for him. She told us not to force him and just let him get more accustomed to everything, which we will probably do. However, I think Dylan’s attitude toward the people at school may have changed as well, which might help. Dylan’s teacher reached into the car to give him a hug. He was a muddy mess, with mud on his face too. He had taken off his shirt and was in his wife-beater style tank-top. He got many hugs from various women who said to him, “mi amor!”

The whole time his teacher was talking to us, his whole class was standing against the chain-link fence happy to see he was okay and waving and saying, “Dylan,” “Hi, Dylan.” If he didn’t walk away from that experience feeling like a lot of people love and care about him, I don’t think there’s a way for it to sink in. They were all so great. I don’t have a way to thank the wonderful people in the neighborhood.

After we got home, our branch president, Presidente Lopez, came over. He heard about Dylan and had been out looking. I didn’t realize how many people knew. It was amazing. He was commenting that his wife wasn’t worried about anything bad happening to Dylan by some other person, but that he might get bitten by a poisonous snake or something. Nelsy said something similar and that was my sense generally. I didn’t think it was likely that he would be harmed by anybody else. I was just afraid he was lost, even though we were guessing that he was hiding somewhere.

As Presidente Lopez said, it was “una experiencia nueva”. I was just really touched by the caring and concern from so many people.

Poor Hannah, though. She is strong, but this one really took a toll on her. She is working on the language but feeling disconnected and frustrated by her inability to communicate with people, especially when looking for her lost son. She is a good brave woman.