For Most, It’s a Matter of Choice

It’s no mystery why the more than 23,000 adults now listed as missing with the FBI’s National Crime Information Center have disappeared.

“They’re missing because they want to be,” says John Sack, one of eight investigators in the missing persons unit for the Los Angeles Police Department.

Of the nearly 3,500 adults reported as missing to the Los Angeles Police Department in 1990, Sack estimated that 85% were “voluntarily missing.”

“For whatever reason, they just take off,” he said. “Some of it’s (because of) financial obligations; some of it’s emotional business. Maybe a guy is married and he got his girlfriend pregnant. He gets rid of that emotional baggage and goes off someplace else and starts a new life.”

In some cases, those who voluntarily disappear go so far as to create new identities for themselves. Occasionally, they will surface in the news.

Dennis Rarick was a prominent 35-year-old mathematician when he walked out of his Bethesda, Md., apartment in 1976, leaving behind his car, wallet, personal papers and a note to his father saying he was “going on the kind of trip where you never come back.”

Rarick resurfaced in San Diego County in 1990 as Leonard Cohn. Under his new identity, he earned a master’s degree and doctorate in computer science, got married, had two sons and started his own business in Mira Mesa.

It was depression that reportedly caused him to pull his vanishing act. As for why he finally decided to come forward after 14 years, Cohn told The Times last year that “there was no single event or critical thing, but it took a number of years to get over my emotional problems, and quite a few more years to gather the strength to come forward and tell the world what I had done.”

Changing one’s identity is not difficult. There are even how-to books on the subject. Cohn, for example, visited a cemetery, found the name of a person who had died as a child and, after obtaining a copy of the birth certificate, established a new paper trail.

Investigators say, however, that it is rare for a missing person to create a new identity.

Ultimately, Sack said, about 87% of missing adults are found or otherwise accounted for: Some are spotted on the street; others are discovered in jail or found to have been in an accident; a few will be in the morgue.

According to Sack, even those who want to remain missing will often call a friend or make an insurance claim.

In fact, investigators say, most missing persons turn up within a week. “Generally,” Sack said, “the longer an investigation goes, the more likely they have met with an accident or foul play.”

Still, whether a person is missing by design or for other reasons, the loved ones left behind will face an emotional ordeal.

“They’re very confused, very lost, not knowing where to turn and wondering, ‘How do I even begin?’ ” said Jeralita Costa, executive director of Family and Friends of Missing Persons and Violent Crime Victims, a 16-year-old nonprofit resource and referral organization based in Seattle.

Costa advises families of missing persons to first contact their local law enforcement agency, which will enter the person’s name into the FBI’s national crime information computer.

As for what happens next, she said, “A lot of them are very frustrated when they can’t get an immediate response from the police.” She explained that law enforcement does not consider people missing until they have been gone for 48 hours.

In addition to providing emotional support, Costa’s organization also provides families with information on how to conduct their own searches for a missing person: how to trace credit card use, contact the Department of Motor Vehicles and Social Security Administration and even make up missing-persons posters. If family members can afford it, Costa also advises them to hire a private investigator “who can give their case some real scrutiny and really spend some time on it.”

For the families, it’s largely a matter of waiting. Some of the Los Angeles Police Department’s approximately 250 still-open missing persons cases date back to the 1950s.

“It’s the not knowing that can be very frustrating,” Costa said. “It’s hard to get on with your life or move ahead when you’re not sure what’s happened.

“And you fear the worst and hope for the best.”