The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services has searched four years for Shalis Gama, a mother who fled with her son to prevent the state from taking the boy because of her drug use.
“Mother and child seem to have dropped from the face of the Earth,” said one DCFS report about the search.
In fact, they have been living in northern Indiana for some time, using their own names. On a recent afternoon, the boy stepped out of his school and ran into his mother’s arms.
Using public records and the boy’s DCFS case file, the Tribune located the boy and his mother in a matter of hours.
A review of DCFS’ efforts to find the boy and several others listed as abducted from state care shows the searches have been hampered by bureaucratic bungling and a willingness to give up.
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In some cases, police reports were not filed–a violation of state rules.
The state has moved to close some cases of abducted children even though the children haven’t been found.
Even when cases were chased, trails eventually went cold, leaving family members to search on their own.
DCFS has faced a growing controversy over the handling of missing and abducted state wards, in part because it has been unable to provide an accurate accounting of how many are missing.
A task force appointed by Gov. Rod Blagojevich reported last week that the agency was not working aggressively to find these children.
Bryan Samuels, head of the commission that authored the report, was made director of DCFS on Monday.
On Friday, the agency declined to comment about the Indiana boy’s case and several others. Officials told the Tribune to submit questions in writing to Samuels, who would respond in seven working days. The agency did not ask the Tribune where the boy and his mother were living.
Cook County Public Guardian Patrick Murphy–whose office also searched for the boy–was shocked when told that the Tribune located the boy.
“The fact that you found him means that DCFS could have found him just as easily,” Murphy said. “It’s amateur hour there.”
At last count, Illinois listed 19 of its wards as abducted, most believed to be taken by their parents. Some are as far away as Mexico, authorities believe.
The Tribune searched briefly for several other abducted state wards but could not locate them. Rather than continue looking, the Tribune decided to publish the information about the abducted child found in Indiana.
Tracking the abducted wards can sometimes call for tedious investigative work, a challenge for social workers already overwhelmed by abuse and neglect cases.
“The system is broken,” said Toby Weismiller, director of professional development and advocacy for the National Association of Social Workers.
In one Illinois case, a father said he took up the search for his 5-year-old daughter, abducted by her mother last July, because he believed police and DCFS were doing little to find her.
“I was thinking, no one gives a damn,” Ramon Salgado said.
About two weeks ago, he said, the girl’s godfather found her in Chicago and brought her to Salgado. DCFS would not discuss the case Friday.
In some cases, police do not know of the missing children.
No police contact
A new caseworker assigned to the case of an abducted 11-year-old boy found that the Chicago Police Department had no record of the boy’s abduction two years earlier.
DCFS rules require caseworkers to notify police immediately when they learn that a child is missing.
“No missing person’s report was on file until this worker contacted authorities on Dec. 21, 2001,” the social worker wrote last year.
Friends and relatives have recently spotted the boy’s mother, Lillie Cunningham, on the South Side, the boy’s grandmother said.
According to case files, an investigator for the public guardian’s office tracked the abducted boy to Mississippi in October 2002 and spoke to the boy’s mother on the telephone. She hung up when she realized it was an investigator. When local social workers checked on the home, they could not find the boy or his mother.
In March, the state filed a motion in court to close the case, even though the boy had not been found, according to court documents. The agency on Friday declined to explain why it sought to close the case.
The boy’s family, however, continues to look for Lillie Cunningham and her 11-year-old son.
“Sometimes me and my son get in the car, fill it up with gas and just start looking for them,” said Ida Mae Cunningham, grandmother of the 11-year-old.
In another case, Deloris Randall said she is contacted by different caseworkers every eight or nine months about her missing 7-year-old grandson.
Documents reviewed by the Tribune show that DCFS workers could not find the boy or his mother, Gail Randall, even though a subsequent investigation revealed the two had been repeatedly seen in Chicago.
At one point, Randall was arrested on drug charges and began serving time in Cook County Jail–unbeknownst to social workers. She was in jail for seven months before an investigator learned she was there and could be questioned about her son, who remains missing.
The case of Shalis Gama and her son–located in Indiana by the Tribune–not only shows that some of the children can be found, but also sheds light on the complexities of the families involved.
Gama, 35, now lives in East Chicago and works as a telemarketer.
“It was pretty lucky for me. I moved away because I thought they would take [him] from me,” Gama said during a six-hour interview last week. “I was here for a while and saw nobody was looking for me, so I didn’t think about it anymore.
“They could have found me if they were looking for me.”
DCFS first became involved with Gama nine years ago after the then-mother of two fell in the snow after overdosing on what she said was a potent line of PCP. Her daughter, dressed in a pink snowsuit, stood beside her on the sidewalk.
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Gama recalls waking up to the sound of an ambulance, then her daughter’s voice. Gama never made it to pick her son up from school.
She acknowledges drinking and using drugs at that time in her life. She tried to sober up but slid back into old habits.
In February 1994, DCFS took custody of Gama’s two children, who were later adopted by relatives. Gama gave birth to her second son in October 1996.
Two years later, Gama tested positive for PCP. That summer, a hot-line call was received by DCFS alleging that Gama had resumed drug use.
In 1999, although the state didn’t know where the boy was, DCFS was granted guardianship by the court. But Gama had already begun to run.
Relocated in Indiana
She lived in Chicago for a while, then moved to Indiana. Along the way, she reunited with the boy’s father. The couple have since had two more children, and the family now lives in a tidy two-bedroom apartment with some used furniture found in the trash in Oak Park.
When Gama met the boy at school on a recent afternoon, he ran to her. He talked of sandwiches and book reports on the car ride home. Once home, he rode his silver scooter down the sidewalk, basking in the last minutes of afternoon sunlight.
The boy races toy cars on the living room’s spotless, dark blue carpet.
Gama keeps a school picture of the boy on a key chain. In the photograph, he wears his favorite shirt, a red jersey with a No. 48.
The boy is shy and shrugs his shoulders and giggles nervously when asked about his “nice mom.” He loves her macaroni-and-cheese dinners with chicken and green beans, he said. He likes when Gama reads him books using different voices for various characters.
The boy performs in holiday church plays. He loves football, enjoys dancing to rap music. He watches the news.
“When I get bigger, I want to be in the army,” he said.
The Gamas go to the park, where the boy and his brother and sister run, and to an amusement arcade, where they play games. Next week, the boy will attend a live performance of Sesame Street.
“I want you to go,” he tells his mother. “Mom, I want you to go with me.”
For his book reports, he was awarded a gold medal, which hangs from an orange band, at school. He boasts an award certificate with his name on it.
For the first time, Gama has an office job, with a desk and a phone headset. She dreams of a house where her three youngest children can each have a room and a large yard to run in. Her life of drugs is behind her now, she says.
“I just quit. I got tired of the feeling of being high all the time,” she said. “I could see if I was partying, I wasn’t being a good mom.”
As she boiled noodles and heated corn for dinner, the boy joined his father on a trip to the grocery store to buy meat.
“It’s the end of the month, our food is low right now,” she said. “But we will figure it out.”
The boy told Gama he was going to buy her a necklace from a gumball machine.
“Love you,” he said and kissed her.
“Love you too,” she answered.