Fifteen-year-old Stacie Lyons should be enjoying summertime the way most teenagers usually do: swimming in cool, clear lakes; enjoying the few months of real sunshine; sleeping until noon or even later; or just hanging out and being, well, a teenager.
Instead, Stacie and her tight-knit group of about 20 friends spend a lot of their waking hours putting up yellow ribbons — signifying a safe return — for one friend who isn’t with them. Leah Freeman, also 15, has been missing from her Coquille home since June 28. Coquille is located in southwest Oregon, about 15 minutes from Coos Bay.
Leah disappeared while walking home from a friend’s house and law enforcement agencies across the state have been searching for the high school sophomore.
A pair of shoes believed to be Leah’s have been found in two separate Coos County spots, 13 miles apart, but positive identification of who owned the shoes has not been made.
Before you ask yourself, “What does a story about Leah Freeman have to do with me, with Eugene or the University of Oregon?,” think for a minute. Maybe you have a sister, a niece, a daughter or even a friend that age. When a 15-year-old — or any person who is loved by many — is missing, the story affects us all.
Stacie first contacted the Emerald about two weeks ago with information about Leah, with calls already made to The Register-Guard and local TV stations. She didn’t know where this newspaper is delivered or how many people might actually read it. That didn’t matter to her, she said, because Stacie just wants people to know who Leah is and that she could be out there somewhere.
Stacie moved to Junction City almost four weeks ago, and Leah, her best friend since grade school, was the last person Stacie saw in Coquille before she left town.
“I always encourage everyone to not give up hope until the very end,” Stacie said Friday, while sifting through photos of Leah at a Junction City restaurant.
While going over traits she wanted to highlight about Leah, Stacie’s demeanor didn’t change much. The gravity of the situation is evident while she talks, but at the same time, there are glimmers of optimism because Stacie speaks about Leah in present tense.
“Daisies are her favorite flower,” Stacie said at first, then listed about 30 other personal characteristics about Leah. “She loves kids … Leah cries whenever she read my poems … She hates her toes and whenever she wears sandals, she curls her toes … She loves to stuff as much food as possible into her mouth … She has a great sense of humor … She always has good comebacks.”
It’s when Stacie is talking about the possibility of a worst-case scenario that she strays from the optimistic outlook.
“I don’t even know how to explain this, but I always knew that I was going to lose a friend, but I thought it would be in a car wreck,” Stacie said. “Ever since she’s been gone, I keep thinking of the things that we’ve done. If I see her again, I’m going to tell her that I love her.”
Sometimes those of us who made it through our teens relatively unscathed when it comes to dealing with trauma forget exactly how much perception we were actually capable of back then.
These days, in regards to teens, it’s so simple on occasion to dismiss what they may be experiencing as passing emotions.
“Older people don’t doubt that there are deep emotions with teens, but they doubt that we learn from it,” Stacie said.
Leah’s mother, Cory, has seen the outpouring of feelings and emotions from her daughter’s friends. While Cory can barely talk about the situation without crying, she senses the impact that this case has had on not just the Freeman family, but on Stacie and her friends as well.
“Everybody loves Leah; it’s impossible not to,” Cory said Monday in a phone interview from her home in Coquille. “Everybody misses her.”
Police in Coquille immediately called this case an abduction, Stacie said. Leah has never run away from home before, and she wouldn’t let people worry like this. Stacie even speculates that Leah knows her abductors, but then again, in a town the size of Coquille — approximately 4,200 residents — everyone usually knows everyone else.
That sense of small towns being safe slips away each time that a Leah Freeman turns up missing. And the reality of what awaits Stacie and her friends in adulthood is just made all that much clearer.
“I’ve been a lot more careful about what I do,” Stacie said. But not all innocence is lost in these circumstances. “I’ve also learned to tell people how I feel about them because it is really important.”
The Freeman family is offering a $10,000 award for information that leads to Leah’s safe return.