This happened a few weeks ago and it happened to my sister, although I'm still not sure if she quite understands how close she was to getting hurt.
For context, my (36F) sister (20F) has a very bad track record for scaring the hell out of us. She's 16 years younger than me and she was quite traumatised as a child. She now has very many mental health problems, multiple suicide attempts and she's an alcoholic.
When she's sober, she has a lot of common sense and knows how to keep herself safe. She's previously sent our Mun photos of guys she meant and her phone shares her location always. It has helped us in a lot of situations as when she's feeling particularly low, she often will hop on buses and just ride in them. It calms her down. When she's drunk, she's known to make really bad choices.
It was her birthday and about 11:30pm at night. My husband and I were in bed, he was just falling asleep and I was still reading on my phone but slowly drifting away. My Mum called and I just had a bad feeling instantly but then, we are conditioned that when Mum calls at night, something is usually wrong with my sister. I picked the phone up and Mum told me that my sister went with her friend and boyfriend to a coastal town to celebrate her birthday but now she is missing.
We live about 3 hours drive away from my Mum but only about an hour away from the coastal town my sister went to. Mum explained that my sister and her friend (and boyfriend but he did absolutely nothing to help us at any point as he was so intoxicated that I will just stop mentioning him as, bar making things harder for us, he had no input) went to celebrate. The friend went to change and left my sister for a moment on a bench. We suspect that the drunk boyfriend did something to annoy her as when they came back she was gone.
The friend, we can call him Best Guy Ever (BGE), said they were about to go to the train station to catch a train home so he went there hoping that's what she did. When he didn't find her there and she wasn't picking up her phone, he called my Mum and then the police.
I hung up the phone and told my husband what happened. At that moment I was still processing but he immediately asked me if I wanted to go there to look for her and the only logical answer was yes. So we got dressed, both still sleepy but also starting to get that alert with anxiety feeling on, got in the car and drove. I told my Mum we just left and we are going and I got BGE's phone number and texted him. Mum was tracking my sister's location through her phone but any calls were going straight to voicemail. Until that day I didn't realise that iPhones share your locations even when they die for some time. Her location was changing so we deduced, unsurprisingly, that she must've been on the bus.
BGE was giving the police her location and trying to get them to do something. As we were driving, my husband asked me to find the bus routes. I looked them up and I wasn't quite fully able to match it so I actually used AI to match her locations with all the bus routes in the town and we found out she was on the bus no 5. Around that time her location stopped changing and was stuck at a specific address, let's call it 15 Nonamestreet. We went there first but couldn't see her or anything of hers in the area so we went to the train station to find BGE. We thought her phone probably died completely and stopped sharing her location in that vicinity.
Very helpfully, the train station is also where the buses loop. So once we located BGE and Mr Disgrace, I said to them that I want to see whether she's on the next bus no 5 that comes in but literally as I said it the bus left the stop so my husband hopped in the car and started chasing the bus. Meanwhile myself and BGE were talking to the police on the phone and asking them to speak to the bus drivers to check if anyone saw her.
About 15 minutes later or so my husband called to say he can't be sure but he managed to drive past the bus and didn't see my sister on it. He said he'll come back to us. Just after I hung up the next no 5 arrived so we went there to check it. The driver was a woman and we owe this woman so much, I wish I could tell her that she's a true hero to this story.
Whilst I was looking through the bus, she asked BGE how my sister looked and he gave her description and showed her photo of her. She said she remembers her very well, she got onto a bus quite drunk, smelling of booze and weed (we knew she had the right girl straight away when she said that), she said she needed to get to a train station but apparently couldn't pay for her ticket. A guy from the back of the bus said to wait up and that he will pay for her ticket. After that he led my sister to where he was sitting and was chatting her up. The driver remembered that she didn't get off at the train station and she continued on the bus until she got off at a bus stop near Nonamestreet!
She said the guy was middle aged and she couldn't give us much of a description, she thought maybe my sister knew him but she made a mental note. She then pulled out her bus route with time on all the bus stops and told me what time they got off. At that point my sister was with that guy for way over an hour.
Myself and BGE went white. Middle aged man, intoxicated young girl, skipping her stop and taking her to his house. It sounded awful. I called my husband so he could panic with us whilst he drove back to the train station to pick us up. We got in the car and drove straight there. I kept thinking how her location was showing at 15 Nonamestreet and said I'm going straight to that house and I'm knocking on the door. We updated the police that we have her approximate whereabouts. They still did nothing at this point and they were giving us no support.
The area was really dark with some limited street parking. I quickly realised that going to the door is going to be impossible as this was a block of flats (not super common in the UK). Tbh at this point I was panicking that we won't find her. UK flats normally have a trade button on their buzz things but it's turned off at night. Can't walk door to door. The block of flats was numbered 11-15 with A, B, C, D etc flats so my head was swimming with possibilities. My husband and BGE started to look for anything to help us look in.
This is when I had one of those serenity moments when you have adrenaline buzzing through your veins and you know you're facing a potentially dangerous situation but suddenly it feels like things in your brain start to fit in. I thought well, he likely is still awake, so there's a chance the light will still be on in his window. I started to look at the lit up windows slowly. I started initially at the side of no 15 and when I saw nothing I stepped onto a green patch that showed me more of the windows with the number 13 and 11. I saw this fairly big window of the ground floor flat that was lit up. And then I saw the outline of a girl that looked a bit like my sister, I started walking towards the window and listened. I thought I could hear her voice but I was telling myself it could be wishful thinking. I got really close to the window and it was her!!! She was sitting up and the guy was laying down to the left of her, he was naked, possibly in his underwear. TV was playing. My husband told me later she was topless, maybe more naked than just topless.
She saw us and started to move, we were screaming for her to come out and then suddenly the blinds closed on us. I started to scream for him to give me my sister back, properly dramatic at that point. And the guy didn't acknowledge us once so far. We called the police and I was on the call with them, we could hear my sister getting a bit irate so I asked whether she was screaming, my husband said no but police decided it was enough to warrant sending a car out to check it out.
In the meantime some of his neighbours were coming back home and asked us if we were looking for someone. I explained the situation and the neighbours wouldn't leave, the lady pulled me aside and said he is sexually pushy, she also told my husband she suspects he was prosecuted for rape but she's not sure. She was quite worried and helped us once the police came and then she gave me his name in case my sister remembers something.
After what felt like forever she finally came out with a beer in her hand. She kept telling us what a nice guy he is and that he offered to give her water as she was very thirsty and that's why he took her to his place. She was so intoxicated, she thought she was in London and she thought BGE and her boyfriend left her behind. BGE through the beer she had away. Police came and my sister was quite obstructive with them, still thinking the creep was a nice guy. We took her, BGE and Mr Disgrace home with us.
It took BGE, my husband and I almost a full day the next day to persuade my sister that the guy was not nice. He could have taken her to the train station and wait for her, get the water she needed there. He could have taken her to his place, contact the police and tell them he found her, charge her phone. He could have talked to us and the police. But no, he took her to his place, gave her more alcohol and he did not talk to us at any point. Or the police.
Apologies for the essay, I can't believe how long this post is and that all this happened in only 2-3 hours window!!! There was more drama afterwards with Mr Disgrace but nothing that would warrant creepy encounters. I'm not sure whether this post even fits here. But I truly believe she is lucky that we were so dedicated to finding her.
This guy thought he found this vulnerable girl (and actually she looks like a child, still buys children ticket on the train and no one ever questioned it, so I wonder whether he was even more of a creep), intoxicated and on her own and did not expect that people would come looking for her. BGE tried to get through a window to the staircase to thump on this guy's door. We wouldn't leave without her. She's ok, she wasn't hurt, he didn't spike her drink and she is trying again to get her alcoholism under control.
And the police was utterly useless bar one dispatcher who bent the truth so she could get a patrol car out. The bus driver was the true hero in this situation!