Without a Trace

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By Linda Childers

Libba Phillips knows how easy it is for someone to vanish into thin air.
     Six years ago, her younger sister Ashley, then 25, disappeared without a trace from the streets of Tampa, Fla. She had been released only days earlier from a drug rehab center. “My sister has a history of severe depression and substance abuse, but she was working hard to put her life back together,” says Phillips, 37, of Fair Oaks. “One day she just didn’t return home after work and my family was frantic. It was paralyzing to think of her out there alone and vulnerable.”
     Since Ashley was an adult who had run off before, Phillips and her family encountered numerous roadblocks as they tried to engage police assistance. They quickly discovered that Ashley’s case didn’t warrant the same support and media attention commonly given to families of missing women.
     “They refused to file a missing-persons report on my sister for almost four years,” Phillips says. “My family was forced to conduct our own search.”
     Her own experiences navigating the missing-persons system made Phillips reassess. A successful pharmaceutical representative, she loved her job but wanted to do more to locate Ashley.
     In 2001, Phillips resigned from the corporate world and started Outpost for Hope, a nonprofit organization devoted to helping families navigate the missing-persons system and assist law enforcement and other missing-persons agencies in resolving John and Jane Doe cases.
     “Because Ashley wasn’t officially listed as a missing person, my family’s resources were limited,” Phillips says. “Other law enforcement agencies across the country were never notified that Ashley was missing. If she had become a victim of foul play, we never would have known.”
     Even though she knew the chances of finding her sister alive were slim, Phillips worked tirelessly distributing fliers. She offered a reward for information on her sister’s whereabouts and slept with her cell phone tucked under her pillow. Although she received countless calls, few provided any solid leads. Some vaguely claimed to have seen her sister, while other, more disturbing, callers claimed Ashley was dead.
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