Hunt Continues for Big Bear Lake Boy Missing 2 Weeks

Nine-year-old Jack Phillips has not been seen for two weeks near his Big Bear Lake home, and authorities, with nary a clue to follow, are at their wits’ end.

Just about everyone in the mountain community above San Bernardino is keeping an eye peeled for the 4-foot-tall, brown-haired boy with a gold earring in his left ear.

Jack, wearing a black tank top, gray shorts with a Tasmanian Devil caricature and tennis shoes, disappeared Aug. 6. Michelle Phillips, his mother, last saw him that afternoon heading for a nearby park. Another 9-year-old boy told investigators that he saw the boy walking from a picnic area toward the Phillips home about 5:30 p.m. that day.

There has been no trace of the boy since. No indications of foul play, no ransom demands, no confirmed sightings. Nothing.

“This is the largest search our department has ever conducted for a missing person,” said San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Deputy Cheryl Huff. “We’ve done everything we can do, and there’s still no Jack Phillips.”

Starting at 9 the night he was missed, hundreds of searchers have scoured a 20-square-mile area near the park and the boy’s home. Some searched overnight, using night-vision equipment. They have traveled on foot and horseback and in four-wheel-drive vehicles and helicopters.

Flyers have been distributed to virtually every home and business in Big Bear Lake and neighboring Big Bear City. Several dozen registered sex offenders living in the area have been interviewed. And although divers have not yet searched the lake bottom, authorities are watching the shoreline daily.

The closest thing to a possible break occurred several days after the disappearance, when a family friend who lives in Bakersfield said she received an automated phone call asking whether she would accept a collect call.

The woman told authorities she thought she heard Jack’s voice on the other end when the automated call paused for the caller to announce himself. But, she said, when she pressed the phone key pad to accept the call, there no longer was a voice at the other end.

“We’re not 100% sure it was him who made the call,” Huff said. Bakersfield police have also searched for the boy without luck, she said.

The only other person that Jack knows in Bakersfield, Huff said, is his father. But he is in prison, she said.

The boy has lived with his mother and her boyfriend, Roderick (Ronny) Cate, along with the couple’s own 2 1/2-year-old son. Cate was arrested the night that Jack Phillips disappeared, on an unrelated criminal matter.

The two adults apparently had an argument the day that Jack was last seen--and Phillips addressed that at a news conference three days later.

“J. D. told a friend he was tired of the arguing,” she told reporters. “Jack, I love you. Ronny is not at the house. Please come home. You’re not in trouble. You won’t be on restriction. Just come home,” she pleaded. “I love you, J. D.”

Huff said Phillips and her boyfriend “are not suspects at this time” in the boy’s disappearance.

The boy’s mother, whose telephone was disconnected for lack of payment before the youngster disappeared, told the local Bear Valley Voice newspaper that “from the get-go, I felt he has been abducted.”

She told the newspaper that her son had never run away from home before.

A week ago, the full-scale foot search of the area was dramatically scaled back and the case handed over to a team of detectives who are re-interviewing the boy’s acquaintances, Huff said.

“We’ve had reports of possible sightings, but they were called in hours later, and we haven’t been able to confirm any of them,” Huff said. “The level of anxiety is going up because of the time he’s been gone. Every possible outcome is still a possibility.”