Finding Hope Amid Missing-Person Angst

Uraiwain Dimento of Seal Beach has a special reason for wanting her missing husband to reappear, besides just knowing he’s safe: She wants to give him his share of their money.

“He worked so hard all his life; he should at least enjoy it,” Dimento said of her husband, Joseph, who disappeared 18 months ago.

Missing-person cases take up a significant portion of a police department’s time. Most times the missing aren’t gone for long, or they want to be missing.

But here are two myths about missing persons that police want you to know about: One, contrary to TV and what your neighbors may say, you do not have to wait 24 hours to file a missing-persons report. Two, the police do take your reports seriously.

Sometimes even when you don’t expect it, as with the Kevin Wynn case in Huntington Beach.

Imagine thinking for 22 years that someone in your family was dead.

Kevin Wynn was last seen along Pacific Coast Highway in the Seal Beach/Huntington Beach area in 1976. A former Navy man in his early 20s, he fit the profile of a victim of sexual predator Randy Kraft. Kraft was arrested in Orange County in 1983, convicted of 16 murders, and is now on death row in San Quentin. Though Kraft wasn’t charged with killing Wynn, the young man’s family was told he may have been a Kraft victim.

When Huntington Beach Police Det. Steve Mack was assigned missing-person investigations three years ago, he decided to take a fresh look at the old Wynn file. In attempts to establish dental records through the Navy, he stumbled across other information 18 months ago that eventually led to a very much alive Kevin Wynn living in San Mateo County. He’d simply chosen to part from his family and never tell anyone.

“The family was elated he was alive,” Mack said. “One family member had never given up, but the others had become convinced he was dead.”

They were also surprised to learn that after 22 years, there was a cop around who cared enough to keep digging.

Missing-person calls come into the police here daily. Anaheim reported 897 missing-person reports in 1999. Interestingly, it also reported that 955 people turned up that year. That’s because dozens of people were reported as returned who had been listed as missing from previous years.

Huntington Beach alone handles close to 750 such reports each year. The vast majority are juvenile runaways who turn up at a friend’s, or some adult who broke from routine and didn’t come home until later.

In other words, a lot of false alarms. But that’s OK, most police departments tell me. Call anyway.

“Just one missing child is important--if it’s your child,” said Greg Truax, who heads the state attorney general’s missing and unidentified persons unit. It gets more than 150,000 cases to examine each year.

Calls Treated as Possible Homicide Cases

So don’t ever think you’re wasting the police’s time with a phone call. Said Mack:

“At the point where you believe the person is really missing, that’s the time to call the police.”

And don’t wait 24 hours. Actually, there’s a basis for that myth; the police used to have a 24-hour rule. But no more.

“We treat every missing-persons call as if it’s a potential homicide case,” said Huntington Beach Lt. Chuck Thomas. With every missing-person call, Thomas says, he is reminded of Marina Bishop of Anaheim, killed by a former boyfriend in 1988. She’d been missing since that morning, but her family waited until late that night to call police. By then she was dead and her body dumped near Victorville.

Only a handful of the many missing-person cases fall into the category of suspected foul play. Some, however, are just plain mysterious.

Like the disappearance of Joseph Dimento. The 61-year-old retired IBM engineer disappeared in June 1998, the day he and his wife, Uraiwain, returned from a hiking trip to Joshua Hills park near Palmdale. He walked out that night after they’d had a spat and didn’t come back. Thinking he was staying with friends, she waited a week to report him missing.

Today, Uraiwain Dimento has fliers all over the area and has hired two private detectives to help find him. Three months ago, she offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to his safe return. So far, the police say: nothing.

Uraiwain is convinced he’s alive.

“He is a very stubborn man,” she said. “I don’t think he was taking retirement well.”

They own four homes together and a considerable stock portfolio and cash assets, she said, yet he’s never tried to take anything. If he returns now, she says, she doesn’t even know if she’d take him back. But she at least wants him to get his share of their assets.

By the way, local law enforcement makes one request that doesn’t seem out of line: If you do file a missing-persons report, don’t forget to call the police if the person shows up.

“We find we’re making inquiries about people and when we report back what we’ve found out, we learn the person is already home,” said Anaheim Sgt. Joe Vargas.

This is my first Thursday column of the new year, and I had a special reason for writing about missing persons:

My New Year’s resolution was to do a better job responding to e-mails and telephone calls from readers. In cleaning out a batch of old e-mails, I discovered that one I had failed to respond to came from a former colleague. He was seeking help on behalf of an Irvine family desperately searching for their missing daughter.

Her name was Rachel Newhouse, a 20-year-old Cal Poly San Luis Obispo student, and it turns out she was already dead. But at the time my help was sought she was still missing; she was last seen in November 1998, and her body wasn’t found until last April. I regret I hadn’t been more sensitive to this family’s plea.

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Monday and Thursday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling (714) 564-1049 or e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com.